Draft

Nepal’s Sustainable Development Goals

Baseline Report
June 2017

National Planning Commission,

Government of Nepal
Recommended citation:
National Planning Commission, 2017: Nepal's Sustainable Development Goals, Baseline
Report, 2017. Government of Nepal, National Planning Commission, Kathmandu, Nepal

Copyright © May 2017

Government of Nepal
National Planning Commission
Kathmandu, Nepal

Published by:
Government of Nepal
National Planning Commission
Singha Durbar
Kathmandu, Nepal
Tel: 977-1-4211629
email: npcs@npcnepal.gov.np
Website: www.npc.gov.np

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy,
recording or otherwise –without prior permission.

UNDP-NPC joint implementation project "Strengthening National Planning and Monitoring

Capacity"(SNPMC) Project supported the preparation of this Nepal's Sustainable
Development Goals, Baseline Report, 2017.

Cover Photo by:

Printed in Nepal

Design & Process by:

 Foreword

Sustainable Development has been a global agenda for the last 25 years. The Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) declaration by the United Nations has set foundation for Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The UN Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in
June 2012, and UN General Assembly (UNGA) held in September 2014 prepared solid foundation for SDGs
and finally agreed in the UNGA held in September 2015. Nepal, as a member of the UN, is committed to
this global initiative.

Nepal has made significant progress in poverty reduction and human development in the last two decades
- absolute poverty declined by one percentage point each year and HDI improved by one basis point per
year. Still, absolute poverty at 21.6 percent is among the highest in South Asia; and the country is at the
bottom of the countries with middle human development status. Nepal intends to be a middle income
country by 2030.

This report is an attempt to update the National SDGs Report prepared by NPC in 2015, work out key SDGs
indicators which are consistent with global ones, update their baseline status, and revisit the targets set
for 2030, wherever necessary. The report also assesses the national situation by each SDG from national
perspectives, examines their relevance in the national context and provides inputs for national planning,
dialogue, and shows a pathway for implementation. Further, this report is expected to guide Nepal in
operationalization of SDGs at all levels- national, provincial and local. It contains goal-wise indicators and
their quantitative benchmarks.

The NPC Secretariat would like to extend its appreciation to Dr. Yuba Raj Khatiwada - then Ex-Vice
Chairman of the National Planning Commission (NPC) and his team for preparing and writing the draft of
this report. The NPCS also acknowledged the contributions from all the staffs and officials of the NPCS,
line ministries, development partners, civil society organizations, and private sector who provided
constructive feedback and suggestions on SDG indicators during national dialogue and consultation
processes and bringing report in this shape.

NPCS expresses its sincere thanks to UNDP Nepal for providing financial support to prepare this SDGs
Baseline Report through its Strengthening National Planning and Monitoring Capacity (SNPMC)
Project and also recognized the administrative and logistic support provided by the staffs of SNPMC
Project. Finally, NPCS takes this opportunity to call upon all the national stakeholders and international
development partners to work together for materializing these development aspirations for the next 15
years.

Vice-Chairperson, NPC
 Nepal’s Sustainable Development Goals
Baseline Report 2017

Table of Contents
Executive Summary .............................................................................................................i-viii
Chapter I: Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1
1.1 Political, Economic and social context:........................................................................................ 1
1.2 Objectives of the Report ............................................................................................................. 5
1.3 Report Preparation Process and Method .................................................................................... 5
1.4 Organization of the Report ......................................................................................................... 6

Chapter II: Overview of MDGs Outcome, Lessons Learnt, and Implementation Status of SDGs 7
2.1 Overview of MDGs Outcome ...................................................................................................... 7
2.2 Lessons from MDGs for the Implementation of SDGs ................................................................ 10
2.3 Long-term Development Vision and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ...................... 14
2.4 Nepal’s Progress in SDGs Implementation ................................................................................ 18
2.5 Constitution of Nepal and Localization of SDGs......................................................................... 22
2.6 Existing Policies and Institutional Environment for SDGs Implementation ................................ 22

Chapter III: Targets and Indicators for Sustainable Development Goals ................................. 28
3.1 Overview of National Global SDGs, Their Targets and Indicators ............................................... 28
3.2 Proposed SDG Targets and Indicators ....................................................................................... 30

Chapter IV: Issues and Challenges in SDGs Implementation................................................... 46

4.1 Fully Integrating SDGs into Periodic Plans, Sector Strategies and Annual Programmes .............. 46
4.2 Prioritization and Sequencing of SDG Targets and Their Indicators ........................................... 47
4.3 Localization of SDGs at the Sub-national Levels ........................................................................ 48
4.4 Reaching Hard-to-Reach People and Up-scaling Interventions .................................................. 49
4.5 Mobilizing Financial Resources and Meeting the Financing Gap ................................................ 51
4.6 Capacity Development at the Federal and Local Government Levels ......................................... 51
4.7 Post Disaster Recovery, Resilience, and Climate Change ........................................................... 52
4.8 Strengthening Governance and Service Delivery ....................................................................... 53
4.9 Strengthening Data, Monitoring and Evaluation system ........................................................... 54

Chapter V: Conclusion and Way Forward for Achieving the SDGs .......................................... 56
5.1 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 56
5.2 Way Forward to achieve the SDGs ............................................................................................ 60

References............................................................................................................................. 69
Annexes ................................................................................................................................ 77

Acronyms

ADB Asian Development Bank

ADS Agriculture Development Strategy
AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
ANC Antenatal Care
CBS Central Bureau of Statistics
CSOs Civil Society Organizations
CO2 Carbon Dioxide
CPR Contraceptive Prevalence Rate
DAC Development Assistant Committee
DOTS Directly Observed Treatment Short-course
DWSS Department of Water Supply and Sewerage
ECD Early Childhood Development
ECED Early Childhood Education and Development
FDI Foreign Direct Investment
FY Fiscal Year
GEM Gender Empowerment Measure
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GDI Gender Development Index
GHG Green House Gas
GNI Gross National Income
GoN Governments of Nepal
GPI Gender Parity Index
HDI Human Development Index
HIPCs Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
ICT Information & Communication Technology
ILO International Labour Organization
IMR Infant Mortality Rate
NGOs Non-government Organizations
INGOs International Non-Government Organizations
IPoA Istanbul Programme of Action
LAPA Local Adaptation Plan for Action
LDCs Least Developed Countries
LPG Liquid Petroleum Gas
MDGs Millennium Development Goals
MICS Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey
MMR Maternal Mortality Ratio
M&E Monitoring & Evaluation
MoE Ministry of Education
MoF Ministry of Finance
MoFr Ministry of Forest
MoHP Ministry of Health & Population
MoH Ministry of Health
MTEF Medium Term Expenditure Framework
MPI Multidimensional Poverty Index
MW Megawatt
NAPA National Adaptation Programme of Action
NCDs Non-Communicable Diseases
NDHS Nepal Demographic Health Survey
NER Net Enrolment Rate
NGOs Non-Government Organizations
NMR Neonatal Mortality Rate
NPC National Planning Commission
NRB Nepal Rastra Bank
NRs Nepalese Rupees
NSDS National Strategies for the Development of Statistics
NWSSHSDP Nepal Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene Sector Development Plan
ODA Official DevelopmentAssistance
ODF Open Defecation Free
OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
RTA Road Traffic Accidents
SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation
SACOSAN South Asian Conference on Sanitation
SADG SAARC Development Goals
SBAs Skilled Birth Attendants
SDGs Sustainable Development Goals
SDNS Statistics Development National Strategy
SE4ALL Safe Energy for All
SSRP School Sector Reform Plan
TB Tuberculosis
TFR Total Fertility Rate
ToE Tones of Oil Equivalent
U5MR Under-Five Mortality Rate
UN United Nations
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNGA United Nations General Assembly
UNESCAP United Nations Economic and Social Commissions for Asia and the Pacific
UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund
UNSD United Nations Statistics Division
UNOWG United Nations Open Working Group
WASH Water, Sanitation & Hygiene
 Nepal’s Sustainable Development Goals
Baseline Report 2017

Executive Summary

Chapter I: Introduction

1.1 Nepal, a young democracy and the youngest federal democratic republic, has been
passing through a protracted political transition for more than a decade. The country,
as one of the 48 least developed countries of the world with per capita income of
about US$ 850 in 2017,is recovering from a decade long violent armed conflict, and
passing through a stage of peace building, social reconciliation and economic revival.

1.2 Nepal has made significant progress in poverty reduction and human development in
the last two decades - absolute poverty declined by one percentage point each year
and HDI improved by one basis point per year. Still, absolute poverty at 21.6 percent
is among the highest in South Asia; and the country is at the bottom of the countries
with middle human development status.

1.3 Political and social strife, prolonged political transition, and instability of the
government has deteriorated investment climate, suppressed agricultural activities,
and undermined the expansion of service sectors like tourism and finance resulting
in slow economic growth. Besides, the country has been passing through various
economic and environmental risks and vulnerabilities. The massive earthquake and
trade blockade in the Southern border between April and September 2015 are their
manifestations.

1.4This report is an update of the National SDGs Report prepared by NPC in 2015. It
revises SDGs indicators to make them consistent with global ones, updates their
baseline status, and revises targets set for 2030wherever necessary. Consultations
with NPC Thematic Task Forces for SDGs and various non-government stakeholders
including the private sector and civil society organizations were held to discuss the
proposed SDG indicators and their 2030 outputs.

Chapter II: Overview of MDG Outcome, and Implementation Status of SDGs

2.1 The MDG Final Status Report shows Nepal’s commendable progress on reducing
extreme poverty and hunger during the period of 2000–2015. Extreme poverty
(defined as 1 $ - a - day) dropped from 33.5 percent of the population in 1990 to 16.4

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 percent in 2013 thereby achieving the target of halving poverty by 2015. Poverty gap
narrowed down to 5.43 in 2011 from 7.55 in 2004 implying that poor people, on
average,are now closer to rising above the poverty line than in 2004. A noteworthy
achievement was made in the reduction of hunger also.

2.2 A very good progress was made in achieving universal primary education - enrolment
ratio (NER) reached to 96.6 percent, survival rate to 89.4 percent and the literacy rate
(15-24 years) to 88.6 percent in 2015. Gender equality was achieved at primary and
secondary education levels with gender parity index (GPI) scores of 1.09 in primary
and 1.0 in secondary education in 2015.

2.3 All the targets under child health - reducing infant mortality rate (IMR), reducing under-
five mortality rate (U5MR), and increasing immunization against measles have been
met. The IMR dropped from 64 per 1,000 live births in the year 2000 to 33 in 2015;
and U5MR declined from 91 per 1000 live births in 2000 to 38 in 2015. Nepal was
close to meeting the targets of reducing the maternal mortality ratio (MMR).

2.4 The country has been able to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss. Forest cover
increased from less than 40 percent in 2000 to 44.7 percent of total land area in 2015.
It has achieved the MDG target of halving the proportion of people without sustainable
access to basic drinking water and basic sanitation as households with access to an
improved source of drinking water increased from 46 percent in 1990 to 83.6 percent
in 2015; and households having access to sanitation (toilets) increased from 6
percent in 1990 to 81 percent in 2015.

2.5 The MDGs Final Status Report highlights on several unfinished agenda of the MDG
with particular focus on absolute poverty, malnutrition, universal school enrolment,
maternal mortality, and access to reproductive health facility. Besides, the report also
flags on the quality, inclusion and equality aspects of the MDGs achieved in
quantitative terms –such as in education, child health, and environment. The SDGs
have to meet these gaps even before embarking on making further progress.

2.6The 14th Year Plan starting July 2016 and budget for FY 2016/17 have considered
SDGs while prioritizing and allocating resources. The budget allocations in the annual
programs are audited against the SDGs, also to check if the allocations are balanced
across SDG areas. The budget audit of FY 2016/17 shows almost two-thirds
(65percent) of the spending gone in three infrastructure related SDG areas - namely
the Goals 7, 9 and 11; 18 percent on social sectors like education, health, water

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 supply and sanitation; and 13percent to directly address poverty and hunger (Goals
1 and 2).

2.7 In order to coordinate SDGs implementation across various sectors, the government
has constituted SDGs Steering Committee under the chairmanship of the Prime
Minister while SDGs working committee is constituted under VC of NPC to coordinate
SDGs implementation at the national as well as sub-national levels. Thematic
working groups for SDGs are formed under the convenership of Members of the NPC
with secretaries of the relevant Ministries as co-conveners and other concerned
agencies as members of the groups.

Chapter III: Targets and Indicators for Sustainable Development Goals

3.1 The proposed SDG 1 targets for 2030 are to reduce extreme poverty to less than five
percent, reduce poverty gap to 2.8 percent, raise per capita income to US$ 2,500,and
raise social protection budget to 15 percent of total budget.

3.2 The targets for SDG 2 include reduction in prevalence of undernourishment (measure
of sufficiency of access to food) to 3 percent and prevalence of underweight children
under five years of age to 5 percentby 2030.

3.3 The proposed SDG 3 targets include reduction of MMR to less than 70 per 100
thousand live birthsby 2030 which is in line with the global target. The child health
targets include reduction of preventable death of newborn and children to less than
one percent. However, for overall newborn and U5 mortality rates, the targets are to
reduce them from 23 and 38 per thousand live births in 2015 to 10 and 22 respectively
by 2030. The other targets include almostelimination of the prevalence of HIV,
TB,Malaria and other Tropical Diseases, and water borne diseases.

3.4 The major targets for SDG 4 include 99.5 percent net enrolment and completion of
primary education, and 99 percent gross enrollment in secondary education by 2030.
The other targets are: 95 percent of students enrolled in grade one to reach grade
eight;and elimination of gender disparities in tertiary education.

3.5 The major targets for SDG 5 are elimination of wage discrimination at similar work,
elimination of physical/sexual violence, eliminating all harmful practices, such as
child, early and forced marriage and chhaupadi, increasing seats held by women in
the national parliament to 40 percent, and increasing women' proportion in public
service decision making positionsby nearly 4 folds to7.5 percentof total employees in
2030 from2 percent in 2015.

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3.6 The proposed targets for SDG 6 include basic water supply coverage to 99 percent
of households and piped water supply and improved sanitation to 90 percent of
households. Other targets are to free99 percent of the communities from open
defecation, to reach 95 percent of the households with improved sanitation facilities
which are not shared, and to ensure 98 percent of the population using latrine.

3.7 The proposed specific targets for SDG 7 include accessibility of 99 percent
households to electricity, reduction to 10 percent -from nearly 75 percent now - the
households who resort to firewood for cooking, increase per capita electricity to 1500
kwh and decrease the commercial energy use per unit of GDP from 3.20 ToE/mRs
in 2015 to 3.14 ToE/mRsin 2030.

3.8 The SDG 8 target for 2030 is to achieve per capita GDP growth of 7 percent, to
maintain the growth of agriculture to about 5 percent and that of construction to 15
percent; reduce material intensity in manufacturing to 60 percent;lower
underemployment to less than 10 percent; and to eliminate the worst form of child
labor.

3.9 The 2030 targetsfor road in SDG 9 are to increase road density to 1.5 km/sq km and
paved road density to 0.25 km/sq km and to connect all the districts, municipalities
and village councils by road. For industries, the targets for 2030 are to increase the
share of industry to 25 percent so as to promote labour intensive activities and to
raise employment in manufacturing to 13percent of the total employment.

3.10The key targets for SDG 10 are to reduce consumption inequality (index) from 0.33
in 2015 to 0.16by 2030 and to reduce income inequality from 0.46 to 0.23 at the same
time period. The PALMA index is targeted to improve from 1.3 to 1 in the same period.

3.11 The 2030 target for SDG 11 is to make at least 50 percent of the urban roadto be
safe from global standard. Besides, the proposed specific targets for 2030 include
doubling the proportion of households living in safe houses; substantially reducing
air pollution, preventing the deaths and injuries due to disaster, repairing and
reconstructing, by 2020, all cultural heritages destroyed by earthquake.

3.12 The SDG 12 target for land to be available for cereal production by 2030 is set at 75
percent of all cultivated land. Consumption of wood is proposed to benot more than
0.05 m3per capita per yearby 2030 from to 0.11 m3per capita per year in 2015. Use
of plastic per capita which was 2.7 gram per day in 2015 is proposed to be almost

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 zero by 2030. Similarly, the post-harvest loss of food is targeted to be less than 1
percent by 2030 from 15 percent in 2015.

3.13 The key targets for SDG 13 are making half the existing CO2 emission level including
from transportation, industrial, and commercial sectors. Consumption of ozone
depleting substance is targeted to reduce to one third of the existing level. In the
meantime, climate smart villages are proposed to be 170 and climate smart farming
to be 500 units by 2030 from zero at present. Almost all the schools will be covered
by climate change education and the number of trained persons (local planners) for
climate change planning would reach 3 thousand.

3.14The key 2030 targetsfor SDG 15 are to maintain conservation area at 23.3 of the total
land area, increase forest under community management from 39 percent to 42 per
cent of the forest area, halt forest loss and degradation, increase mountain
ecosystem covered by the protected area to 70 percent in 2030 from 68 percent in
2015, and undertake additional planation of 5000 ha per annum.

3.16 The major targets for SDG 16 include ending death from violent conflict, violence
against women, and violence against children, improve transparency and
accountability score from a scale of 3 at present to 5, and good governance scale
from (–) 0.78 to 2.0 in a scale of –2.5 to 2.5. The 2030 targets also include eliminating
marriage before the age of 18 years, 100 percent birth registration, 80 percent voter
turnout in elections, and access to justice for all.

3.17 SDG 17 is for all the stakeholders to adhere to - ranging from resource mobilization
and capacity development and accountability to shared responsibility. The target for
revenue collection for 2030 is set at 30 percent of GDP. Domestic expenditure
financed by domestic revenue is targeted to reach 80 per cent from 76 percent in
2015. For meeting the private sector investment financing gap, foreign direct
investment (inward stock) is targeted to increase to 20 percent of GDP in 2030 from
less than 3 percent in 2015.

Chapter IV: Issues and Challenges in SDGs Implementation

4.1 The SDGs are comprehensive, ambitious and challenging goals and require huge
resources as well as capacity enhancement to achieve them in 15 years' time. As
SDGs are not stand-alone goals, achievement of one goal has implications to the
achievement of several other goals.

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4.2 Once the SDGs are tailored in the periodic plans and annual budgets, there is a need
for annual budget audit from the SDGs perspectives. While developing a framework
for such an audit is critical, a designated agency for the task has to be put in place.
A SDGs dashboard could be created to provide open source information on the state
of SDGs implementation and their progress.

4.3 Although SDGs are equally important, indivisible, and common for all countries, their
priorities are country specific, depending upon the level, gaps and structure of
development.Priority, being a relative and not an absolute term, implies that
prioritization should be done in ranks such as priority one, priority two and priority
three. There is no defined way to prioritize them by goals or sectors. Prioritization can
better be done within the targets and indicators. Prioritization will also be guided by
financing and other resource availability and donor support to specific SDGs.

4.4 As the localization of SDGs at the Provincial and Local Government levels is critical
for the universal, equitable and inclusive outcome of sustainable development efforts,
it is equally important to have a political set up at those levels willing and capable of
handling the development agenda in an effective manner.

4.5 Containing inequality through market based policy instruments would be a formidable
task; and unless pro poor growth policies and interventions along with strong
distributive measures are put in place, it is hard to increase the share of bottom 40
percent in national income. Currently, the bottom 40 percent of the population holds
only 12 percent of the national income and it has to be raised to 18 percent of total
income if some tangible achievement is to be made in this area.

4.6 As the SDGs encompass diverse set of outputs and activities, they can be financed
by multiple sources. The government can finance them through public investment
programme at all the levels. Households, who can afford, can finance them in the
form of out-of-pocket expenses. The non-government organizations, cooperatives
and community sectors can finance some of the SDGs through resource mobilization
at the community level. The private sector can mobilize equity and debt from the
domestic market as well as through Foreign Direct Investment for financing the SDGs
which could be implemented in business model.

4.7 The SDG 17 has clearly mentioned about enhancing international support for
implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to
support national plans to implement all the sustainable development goals, including
through North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation. But international
support must be led and reinforced by the national government so that capacity

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 constraints do not impede the achievement of SDGs despite commitments, resource
availability and willingness to carry forward the agenda.

4.8 Strong monitoring system with credible data base is crucial to thesuccess of SDGs.
Only an effective government with a strong statistical systems can measure and
incentivize progress across the goals. There is also huge difference between
government recorded data and those compiled by non-government organizations.
This is particularly the case with violence, crime, human trafficking, violation of human
rights, etc.

4.9 The existing statistical system is marred with various problems such as data sources
spread over multiple windows andother than census and economic surveys, social
and governance related surveys being outside the purview of CBS. Data revolution
taking place due to technological changes, evolution of big data and growing trend of
open data system is yet to evolve.

Chapter V: Conclusion and Way Forward for Achieving the SDGs

5.1 Eradicating poverty requires commencing two-pronged strategy –putting credible

macroeconomic policies in place for higher economic growth and affecting
distribution of income through policy interventions in the labour market along with
expanding social protection. Unlocking the economic growth potential requires that
enabling fiscal, monetary, external trade, investment and labour market policies are
in place, and are providing environment for private investment –domestic and foreign.

5.2 Income inequality has reduced the impact of economic growth on poverty reduction
in Nepal also. Such inequality is built in the disparity in the ownership of productive
assets like land, capital and technology, level of education and skill, and remoteness
of human settlements. For progressively achieving and sustaining income growth of
the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a rate higher than the national average,
interventions have to focus on those very population and areas along with following
progressive taxation and subsidy policies.

5.3 Inclusion of peace, justice, and responsible institutions in SDGs agenda is a welcome
step. However, the goal, especially in the components of good governance, rule of
law and access to justice, is quite vague. The country needs to prioritize particular
indicators in the agenda as appropriate to the context.

5.4 The SDGs being shared responsibility, both the national government and
international development partners have to be on board and should be working

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 together to address the resource, governance, and capacity gaps at the country level.
But if the experience of MDGs was any indication, it would be extremely difficult to
bring all the global development actors on one platform. This applies even among the
UN agencies.

5.5 The SDGs are very much resource intensive; and developing countries like Nepal
can face large financing, technological and implementation capacity gaps. Such gaps
have to be measured in concrete terms with proper needs assessment tools so that
funding and raising implementation capacity could be objectively worked out.
Pledging international aid for the SDGs also requires that the funding gap is credibly
worked out. The government will have to identify the interventions needed for
achieving the targets and their indicators, and assess the constraints in their
implementation.

5.6 Obviously SDG priorities have to be set against fiscal, financial, managerial,
institutional and other capacity constraints. But they should not be rigidly bound by
the constraints; and, efforts must be made to unlock the binding resource and other
capacity constraints.In essence, prioritization of projects and programs should be
based, along with direct or indirect contribution to the achievement of any SDGs, on
synergy that they can bring in the development process, having larger social impact
along with economic.

5.7 The SDGs cut across all sectors and actors including the civil society organizations
and the private sector. A large portion of activities under SDGs are to be held at the
private sector and other non-government development actors. At the current planning
process, more than 55 per cent of the investment required to achieve the outputs and
outcomes of the plan are not monitored. This should be corrected, and all non-
government actors including the private sector should be brought under the
monitoring purview of the plan and the SDGs.

5.8 SDGs are very much data intensive so far as their monitoring and tracking the
progress is concerned. The aspiration of ‘leaving no one behind’ implies that the
progress must be tracked at a highly disaggregated level, also given the disparity in
the initial condition of development across age, sex, location, ethnicity, disability and
income groups.A large number of surveys have to be done in the next few years to
meet the data gap and create base line data for the targets having no database so
far. Existing surveys will have to be tailored to the SDG monitoring needs particularly
when it comes to gender, social class and geographical location based target setting,
analysis, and monitoring of the SDG outcomes.

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Chapter I: Introduction

1.1 Political, Economic and social context:

Nepal is a young democracy and the youngest federal democratic republic. For the last
three decades, the country is passing through a protracted political transition from
Absolute Monarchy to Constitutional Monarchy with Multiparty Democracy, and further to
Federal Democratic Republic. The Constitution of Nepal, promulgated by the second
Constituent Assembly in September 2015 guarantees civil rights, sets three layered
government structure of the state and guides development road map towards prosperity.
As it took almost a decade to complete the constitutional transition process and to come
up with new constitution, the provincial and local government level laws and institutions
are just in the evolutionary process. The implementation of the federal structure of
governance has started with the election of people’s representatives for the Local
Governments(Village Council and Municipalities). This will enable to exercise the power
and responsibility entrusted by the Constitution to the local governments.

With the political struggle for people’s democracy being over, the challenge is now to
meet the aspirations of Nepali people to develop and prosper. In this context, the country
is striving towards inclusive and high economic growth with social justice and empower
citizens - both economically and socially. While the country’s development plans and
programmes are geared towards this direction, the commitment to implement the 2030
Sustainable Development Agenda and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) in 15 years have reinforced the country’s drive to the path of prosperity. The
initiatives to formulating long term visions and strategies for development at the
government and political levels are indicative of the country’s focus towards this direction.

Nepal, one of the 48 least developed countriesof the world with the population of 28.7
million (as of April 2017) and per capita income1 of about US$ 850(CBS, 2017) is
recovering from a decade long violent armed conflict, and passing through a stage of
peace building, social reconciliation and economic revival. While the decade long armed
conflict during 1996-2006 had its genesis in poverty, inequality, disparity, and exclusion,
the state restructuring process and implementation of fundamental rights of the citizens
enshrined in Nepal’s Constitution 2015 intend to address all such grievances against
state. Thus, as the orientation of the government has been to implement the Constitution
to achieve the development aspirations, the adoption of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable

1
The estimated per capita GDP for FY 2016/17 is 853 US$, while per capita GNI is 862 US$ and per
capita disposable income is 1139 US$ as per CBS preliminary report (CBS, 2017).

1
Development and implementation of SDGs have been complementary to what the
political process of the country is heading to.

The country’s economy is by and large private sector led with public sector consumption
and investments limited to 12 per cent and 23 percent respectively (MOF, 2016). Recently
cooperatives are emerging as key players at the grassroots level and organizing small
farmers and small businesses, providing financial services, and serving the poor through
organizing and empowering them for the creation of jobs and income. Nepal’s liberal
political regime also provides congenial environment for Non-Government Organizations
(NGOs) and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) for community mobilization and engaging
in income generating activities. User Groups, particularly in natural resource management
such as water and forest are also active in mobilizing community and local resources and
have been instrumental to empower people.

Nepal faced two concurrent shocks amid constitutional making process in the recent
years. The first shock was the massive earthquakes of April and May 2015 which caused
a huge loss of lives, property and physical infrastructure. As rehabilitation and
reconstruction are the key priorities of the government, a five year Reconstruction
Strategy has been brought in operation which will shape the course of development for
several years to come. Thus interventions that promote sustainable livelihoods and
expedite reconstruction of the damaged infrastructure have been current priority of the
state. The second shock relates to the four month long trade blockade in the borders
between Indian and Nepal starting September 2015 along with the promulgation of the
Constitution. As Nepal faced a severe trade blockade from the largest trading partner
country at the Southern border of the country, this crippled the national economy which
is overly dependent on imports from India. This led almost to a humanitarian crisis due to
acute shortage of imported food, medicine and petroleum products. Subsequently,
Nepal’s priority have fallen in developing self-sufficiency in basic goods such as food,
medicine, and energy. With huge infrastructure gap for sustainable growth of the
economy, emerging priority is also in infrastructure - mainly in hydropower, roads and
airports.

Nepal has made significant progress in poverty reduction and human development in the
last two decades - absolute poverty declined by one percentage point each year and HDI
improved by one basis point per year (NPC/UNDP, 2014). Still, absolute poverty at 21.6
percent is among the highest in South Asia and the country is at the bottom of the
countries with middle human development status. Poverty is closely correlated with lack
of access to productive resources (mainly land), educational attainment, family size,
geographical location, and social exclusion. As the Constitution directs for inclusive
development with social justice, the priority of the government has been implementation
of the same to reduce absolute poverty, achieve fundamental rights of the citizens, and

2
minimize the disparity in development outcomes across gender, social class and
geographical regions.

Nepal intends to graduate from the LDC status to a developing country status by 2022
and further to a middle income country by 2030. It is likely to meet two (human assets
and economic vulnerability) of the three criteria for graduation but is likely to slip off in
threshold per capita income criteria. Thus the priority being accorded in plans and
budgets is to achieve an economic growth of more than 7 per cent per annum with policies
and programs geared towards this.

Notwithstanding the decade long conflict and slow economic growth, Nepal has
maintained reasonable macroeconomic stability. Public finance remains in track with
impressive revenue growth and fiscal deficits at less than 4 percent of Gross Domestic
product (GDP) on average during the last decade(MOF, 2016). Inflation has also
remained in a single digit on average during the last decade. Despite widening trade
deficit, the balance of payments has remained mostly favourable and the country's foreign
exchange reserves have grown to cover more than a year's merchandize imports. Public
sector indebtedness is very low with government debt (domestic and external) remaining
below 25 percent of GDP in July 2016. The financial markets are well functioning and
financial services are rapidly expanding with widening and deepening money and capital
markets.

Economic growth of the country has been modest, averaging 4 percent over the last
decade. Political and social strife, prolonged political transition, and instability of the
government deteriorated investment climate, suppressed agricultural activities, and
undermined the expansion of the services sectors like tourism and finance resulting in
slow economic growth. The 2015 earthquake and economic blockade further reduced the
GDP growth rate to 3 percent in FY 2014/15 and to almost zero percent in 2015/16. There
was a revival in the economic activities in FY 2016/17 with GDP estimated to grow by
nearly 7 percent –mainly because of better agricultural output and low base effect. The
challenge is to maintain this momentum. Besides, the country passes through various
economic and environmental risks and vulnerabilities. Excessive dependence on
monsoon-fed agriculture, farming and human settlements in fragile lands, poor
infrastructure, environmental degradation, and climate change effect on agriculture
exacerbate these risks and vulnerability.

Despite the economy facing so many challenges, absolute poverty (measured by national
definition) decreased from 42 percent in 1995 to 25 percent in 2010 and further to 21.6
percent in 2015 (NPC, 2016) showing a reduction of at least one percentage point every
year on average during the last two decades. However, viewed from the regional,
caste/ethnicity, gender and geographical perspectives, there is a large disparity in the

3
outcome. Certain social groups and geographical areas are far behind the national
average2. Using a more encompassing poverty definition, as reflected in Multidimensional
Poverty Index (MPI), 44.2 percent of the population was in absolute poverty in 2011
(OPHI, 2015). The MPI also shows a large regional disparity in poverty outcomes, as
poverty in the Far Western region in 2011 stood at 59.1 percent against 33.4 percent in
the Western region.

As elsewhere in South Asia, poverty in Nepal is a gendered issue and the incidence of
poverty falls disproportionately on women and girl. There is also acute social and spatial
incidenceof poverty. As Nepal carries a legacy of a hierarchical social structure based on
gender, caste and ethnicity, poverty has a strong social dimension. Food self-sufficiency
is much lower among socially excluded people where poverty is the highest. Similarly,
they are far behind in education and health outcomes. This culminates into low human
development record of such people.

The unequal social and economic opportunities embedded into the hierarchical social
structure has resulted in high income inequality in the country. Gini-coefficient, a measure
of income inequality, stood at 0.328 in 2010, a small improvement from 0.34 in 2004.
PALMA index (which measures the income of the top 10 percent vis-s-vis the income of
the bottom 40 percent) stood at 1.3 in 20113. The share of the poorest quintile of the
households in national consumption and income were only 7.6 percent and 4.1 percent
respectively in 2010 (CBS, 2011a). Besides, there are inequalities in the human
development outcomes as well.

Although many factors along with abject poverty, income inequalities, and social
exclusion have undermined human development outcome, Nepal remains as one of the
few countries having accomplished an impressive record of human development during
the last two decades (UNDP, 2014). But having started with a very low base, Nepal still
remains as a country with low human development status. The Human Development
Index (HDI) score for Nepal in 2011 was 0.458 (UNDP, 2014) with the lowest ranking
among the South Asian Association of Regional Co-operation (SAARC) countries except
for Afghanistan. All of the national human development reports produced since 1998 have
shown that, despite several social inclusion and empowerment measures, there still exist
high inequalities in human development outcome by social groups, gender, and
geographic locations4.

2
For instance, absolute poverty level for some caste, ethnic groups and geographical areas in 2010
remained as high as 45 per cent against national average of 25 percent (CBS, 2011a).
3
The value of 1 would reflect better income distribution. The data source is Human Development Report
(UNDP, 2015).
4
In 2011, the HDI of the 'high caste' (Brahmans and Chhetri) stood at 0.538, while that for the 'low caste'
(Dalit) was at 0.434 and the same for Muslims remained at 0.422. Among identified castes and ethnic

4
On the whole, Nepal’s human development outcome over the past decade shows an
improvement accompanied by considerable gender, social, and geographical or regional
inequalities, despite that the inequalities among regions have begun narrowing down. The
low and differentiated human development outcome by gender, caste and ethnicity,
geography, and by development regions calls not only for scaling up the development
efforts but also for redesigning and targeting development interventions to specially
address the underdeveloped areas or groups. This indicates the need for a devolved and
localized planning and programming of long term development goals along with capacity
building at the local level to benefit from the development interventions.

1.2 Objectives of the Report

The overall objective of this report is to update Nepal’s SDG indicators and their 2030
targets, and set stage for accelerated implementation of the sustainable development
agenda for the next 14 years. The specific objectives of this report are to (i) overview the
SDGs,update theirbaseline information, and review the implementation so far (ii) update
key indicators of the SDGs and their targets in the national context, (iii) flag key issues
and challenges for the implementation of the SDGs, and (iv) provide input for developing
SDGs implementation strategy and for the Voluntary National Review of the SDGs.

1.3 Report Preparation Process and Method

This report is primarily based on the SDGs National Report (NPC, 2015) prepared by the
National Planning Commission in October 2015 in association with the officials of sector
Ministries and experts. As the proposed global SDGs and their targets were yet to be
finalized and officially agreed, thenational indicators proposed in the national report were
not comparable with the global ones. Also the baseline information on several indicators
comprised of 2014 data. This report is an attempt to work out key indicators which are
consistent with global ones, update their baseline status, and revisit the targets set for
2030, if necessary.

In this report, the National SDGs (Preliminary) Report2015 is reviewed and updated with
new baseline information and revised targets and their indicators. The study team worked
closely with the Thematic Task Forces (TTFs) formed by the government to integrate
SDGs into the planning and budgeting process and to coordinate their implementation.

groups, Hill Brahmans have the highest HDI score at 0.557, and the Madhesi Dalits have the lowest. The
Muslims and Dalits have lower HDI values than that of the Brahmans/Chhetris by 27 and 24 percent
respectively. Gender Development Index (GDI) has been low with a score of 0.534 in 2011, using the
arithmetic mean, and 0.482 using the geometric mean. The value of the Gender Empowerment Measure
(GEM) was 0.568 in 2011 compared with 0.391 in 2001 and 0.496 in 2006.

5
The gaps in indicators and information in the previous report are fulfilled through
consultation with relevant TTFs, Ministriesand NPCofficials. Small group meetings with
NPC and Ministries have been organized to clarify the matters and get inputs from the
stakeholders. An inception meeting with the full team of NPC was held at the initial stage
to agree on the outline of the report and the time line of report preparation. Half a dozen
workshops were held with the government agencies, private sector, cooperatives, and
NGOs to get inputs on the draft report; and comments received from various stakeholders
were incorporated to finalize the Report.Series of consultations were also held with
external development partners to get their inputs in the report preparation process.

This report is based on published and administrative data on social, economic and
environment aspects of SDGs and makes the projection of SDG indicators through 2030
using a linear method of projection5. The targets for 2030 are interpolated to 2019 (end
year of 14th Plan), 2022 9expected year of LDC graduation), and 2025 using the base
line data for 2015 and projected figures for 2030. The proposed SDGs indicatorsuse
sectoral data published in the 14th Plan of the government, administrative data of the
government agencies, and publications of non-governmental organizations. For some
indicators related to governance, international sources are also referred when national
data are not available. In the case of data discrepancy between that of NPC and other
agencies, data from the former source are taken. In case of no data available for the
proposed indicators, they are left black with proposal of data generation in future.

1.4Organization of the Report

This report is organized in five chapters. The Second Chapter outlines the government’s
long term development strategy, reviews the SDGs implementation and the progress
made so far, highlights the unfinished MDG agenda, lessons learnt from MDGs
implementation, and their implication for SDGs. The Third Chapter analyses the national
SDGs by each goal, target and indicator, and discusses the milestones made for specified
indicators to achieve the targets and the goals. The Fourth Chapter discusses the issues
and challenges that Nepal has to face to implement the SDGs and achieve the expected
outcome. The Fifth Chapter concludes the report with inputs to the preparation of SDGs
implementation strategy. The SDGs, their targets and details of the proposed indicators
with their measurable output for 2030 are given in the Annex.

5Interim projections made in this report are reconciled with the targets and their indicators set for
2019 in the 14th plan, and also with the targets already set for subsequent years in different
sector strategies.

6
Chapter II: Overview of MDGs Outcome, Lessons Learnt, and
Implementation Status of SDGs

2.1 Overview of MDGs Outcome

In the last one decade and a half, Nepal made good progress towards poverty reduction
and achieving most of other MDGs despite a protracted political instability. The MDG Final
Status Report (NPC, 2016) shows that Nepal made commendable progress on reducing
extreme poverty and hunger in the MDG period (2000–2015). Extreme poverty (defined
as 1 $ a day) dropped from 33.5 percent of the population in 1990 to 16.4 percent in 2013
thereby achieving the target of halving the poverty rate by 2015. Living standards surveys
and subsequent poverty estimates show that the incidence of poverty (by national
definition of Rs 19261 per capita) declined by one percentage point per year between
2004 and 2013 (CBS, 2011; NPC, 2016). The poverty gap narrowed down to 5.43 in 2011
from 7.55in 2004. The reduction in the poverty gap ratio means that on average poor
people are closer to rising above the poverty line now than in 2004. A noteworthy
achievement was made in the reduction of hunger as the country almost met the target
of reducing by half the proportion of underweight children (aged 6 to 59 months) two years
earlier than the target year 2015. The country achieved the target of halving the proportion
of the population who consume less than the minimum level of dietary energy
consumption; in 2012 itself, the achievement was 22.5 percent against the target of 25
percent.

Nepal’s very good progress on achieving universal primary education is reflected in the
large increases of the net enrolment ratio (NER) to 96.6 in 2015, the survival rate to 89.4
percent and the literacy rate (15-24 years) to 88.6 percent. Several government policies
were instrumental to achieve education goal under MDGs: (i) decentralization of school
management to communities, (ii) supervision of schools by resource centres, (iii) support
to schools through per student grants, (iv) introduction of teacher licensing, upgrade of
the entry qualifications of primary school teachers, and the establishment of a system for
assessing learning outcomes, and (v) provision of midday meals, other health and
nutrition programmes, scholarships, and toilets for girls (NPC, 2016).

Gender equality was achieved at primary and secondary education levels with gender
parity index (GPI) scores of 1.09 in primary and 1.0 in secondary education in 2015. Girls
performed better than boys in both primary and secondary level completion rates, as well
as in the retention rates for Grades 5 and 8. However, disparities in educational outcomes
were observed within different social groups, geographical locations, and income level of
the households, and among for children with different levels of ability. The ratio of women

7
to men in tertiary education increased over the last decade, but gender gap continued.
Gender inequality in employment and incomes persisted, mostly due to women‘s lower
skill levels and their unpaid care responsibilities. Gender differences in wages for the
same level of work also persisted over years.

Empowerment of women in political sphere took place though legislation. Nearly, one
third of theMembers of Legislature-Parliament are now women. It was achieved through
mandatory political representation of women in the Constituent Assemblyand
subsequently in the Parliament. Nepal first ever witnessed women as Head of the
State,Chief Justice, and Speaker of the Parliament concurrently. Even the umbrella
organization of the private sector, namely Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce
and Industries (FNCCI), got women as its first ever elected President. In the civil service,
the representation of women has doubled in the last decade due to affirmative action.
However, the presence of women in decision making level is still very low. The
introduction of gender responsive budgeting by the government has helped to increase
gender-responsive programmes and projects across sectors in the government budget.
But several other economic policies and programs still remain gender blind.

Nepal achieved all the targets under child health - reducing infant mortality rate (IMR),
reducing under-five mortality rate (U5MR), and increasing immunization against measles.
The IMR dropped from 64 in the year 2000 to33 per 1,000 live births in 2014, thereby
achieving the MDG target early6 on. Similarly, U5MR declined from 91 per 1000 live births
in 2000 to 38 in 20147. Immunization programme against measles was successful, as
92.6 percent of one-year old children were immunized against measles in 2015. This was
one of the main contributors to the decline in infant and child mortality.

Achievement in maternal health was also encouraging. Nepal was close to meeting the
targets of reducing the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) and increasing the proportion of
births attended by skilled birth attendants (SBAs). The MMR declined from 850 deaths
per 100,000 live births in 1990, one of the highest in the world at that time, to 281 in 2005
and further to 258 in 2015. The proportion of women delivering their babies with the help
of skilled birth attendants increased from just 7 percent in 1990 to 55.6 percent in 2014,
a nearly eight-fold increase8. However, these improvements have not been uniform
across ethnic groups and geographical regions, as disparities exist between rural and
urban areas and among eco-geographical regions and social groups (NPC, 2016).

6
The demographic health survey (MoH, 2017) shows infant mortality at 32 per 1000 live births.
7
The demographic health survey (MoH, 2017) however shows child mortality a bit higher at 39 per 1000
live births.
8
The coverage of delivery with skilled birth attendants was 58 percent as per demographic health survey
2016 which shows further improvement.

8
The large reduction in the MMR is associated with the fall in the total fertility rate (TFR)
from 4.6 births per women in 1996 to 2.3 in 2015 (MoH, 2017). The latter was largely due
to married couples’ increased use of contraceptives from 24 percent in 1990 to 49.6
percent in 20159. Increased use of maternal health services, and increased attendance
at the recommended four antenatal care (ANC) visits have also contributed to reducing
the MMR. Fertility rate among 15-19 year old women dropped from 110 per 1,000 persons
in 2000 to 88 births per 1,000 persons in 2015 (MOH, 2017). In spite of this progress,
many other reproductive health indicators were only partially met by 2015.

Progress in combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases was impressive. Spread of
the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has halted and begun to reverse. HIV infection
rate (15-49 years) which was 0.3 percent in 2000 was maintained at around the same
rate for another five years and reduced to 0.2 percent thereafter. National response to
HIV has been institutionalized in national policy and there is a national strategic plan to
end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.The country was close to achieving most of the malaria
related MDG targets by 2015. Still, there are concerns about growing drug resistance and
the spread of malaria across the Southern border posing risk of malaria through
movement of people. Regarding tuberculosis, three of the four MDG targets were met.
The country has halted and reversed the spread of TB, as reflected in the declining
prevalence and death rates, and has met the target of more than 90 percent of cases
being treated under the Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS). It just fell
short of the fourth target of the proportion of cases detected.

Achievement of environmental sustainability remained mixed. Regarding sustainable

development through reduction of emission of Green House Gas (GHG), Nepal has not
much to do with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of only 0.1 ton per capita in 2015.
Regarding modern energy, the proportion of people using fuel wood as their main source
of cooking fuel has slowly declined from about 68.4 percent of the population in 2000 to
53.8 percent in 2015. The use of liquefied petroleum gas has increased from 7.7 percent
of the population in 2000 to 28.7 percent in 2015. Key factors that have contributed to
achieving this MDG7 target were promotion of alternative energy, donor support for
national alternative energy programmes, and commitment to and adoption of an
adaptation framework on climate change.

Nepal has been able to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss. Forest cover increased from
less than 40 percent in 2000 to 44.7 percent of total land area in 2015 (NPC, 2016).
Community ownership of conservation is the key to forest protection. Almost 44 percent
of Nepal’s households are members of community forestry user groups, with the forest

9
The demographic health survey 2016 (MOH, 2017) shows 53 percent of the of married women using
any kind of contraception, and only 43 percent using modern method of contraception.

9
area managed by communities increasing from 1.0 million ha in 2000 to 1.8 million ha in
2015. Nepal has achieved the MDG target of halving the proportion of people without
sustainable access to basic drinking water and basic sanitation10 as households with
access to an improved source of drinking water increased from 46 percent in 1990 to 83.6
percent in 2015 (NPC, 2016). Similarly, households having access to sanitation (toilets)
increased from 6 percent in 1990 to 81 percent in 2015.

Global partnership for development, was desperately underachieved at all levels. The
MDGs target 8A recognized the need for enhanced market access and assistance from
development partners. But, despite joining the World Trade Organization in 2004, market
access did not materialize for Nepali goods and services mainly because of supply
constraints, the rising cost of production, and political and policy instability. Nepal has
made tremendous progress in the communications sector with tele-penetration at more
than 106.1 percent,and 43.7 percent of the population having internet access in 2015.

Overall, the MDGs have unified, galvanized, and consolidated efforts of all national
development actors to achieve the minimum development which could improve the
conditions of the poor and deprived people. They worked as a common platform for all
international development actors atglobal level to channel and top up resources for
reducing poverty and improving human development. Nepal benefited from the global
initiatives and created a solid ground for embarking on SDGs.

2.2 Lessons from MDGs for the Implementation of SDGs

Poverty and hunger: The remarkable achievement in MDG targets on poverty and
hunger has been achieved with the contribution of multiple actors engaged in the
reduction of poverty such as multi layered interventions from government level, expansion
of cooperatives and community activities, proliferation of NGOs and microfinance
services, workers’ remittances and other social engagement initiatives. But considering
the unequal poverty reduction outcomes across different social groups, geographical
regions and locations, the achievements are very far from being equitable and inclusive.
This means that blanket policies of poverty reduction will not address all poor people at
the same time, and thus targeted interventions of poverty reduction strategy would be
necessary.

Furthermore, the achievements made in poverty reduction are still vulnerable to domestic
as well as external factors as these achievements are mostly driven by workers’
remittances and growing real wages in agriculture also because of absentee workers.

10
Although the target is for safe drinking water, the data reported here belong to basic water supply; and
reported coverage is in terms of infrastructure only.

10
Besides, the poor people who have come out of poverty are vulnerable to disasters and
shocks. This is evident from large number of households fallen under absolute poverty
after the massive earthquake of April and May 2015. Besides, the poverty gap is still high.
The remaining gaps must be filled-in to eradicate poverty and hunger and promote
sustained economic growth, allowing people to prosper inclusively. The vulnerability of
people to poverty, unequal poverty outcomes among regions and social groups, and most
of the poor in hard-to-reach condition demand more comprehensive understanding of
multidimensional nature of poverty, more disaggregated target settings, and putting social
protection floor or safety net in place.

Education:During MDGs era, the quantitative targets of education were met, as

government policies in education shifted from incremental changes towards fundamental
reforms including the decentralization of school management to communities, school
meal programs and grants to schools based on enrolment numbers (NPC, 2016).
Empowerment of communities to manage school and also enhanced community
ownership of schools, decentralization of roles and responsibilities for facilitating
establishment and operationalization of schools, assurance of overall standards and a
minimum learning environment also influenced to increase the enrolment and parents’
participation in school management. Besides, adoption of a liberal policy allowing
operation of schools under private management also widened the access to education,
including in some cases rural settings as well. However, low and declining pass out rates
in secondary (class 10) level examination has raised question on the quality aspect of the
school education.

Despite having achieved almost universal enrolment, retention of students in the primary
and secondary levels is still a serious problem given the current achievement in the
survival rate. Unless these challenges are addressed, the current achievement in NER
and survival may remain under threat. Making education system inclusive also demands
bringing and retaining children with disabilities and making them able to complete at least
the secondary education through proper incentives.In order to improve quality of
education as envisaged under SDGs, it is necessary to improve the teaching and learning
environment, school infrastructure and facilities, and supervision by designated resource
persons. It is also necessary to strengthen the capacity of the local governments to
manage schools and control quality of basic and secondary level education.

Gender:Great achievement was made in reducing gender gap school education. But the
gap in men’s and women’s equal access to economic resources and opportunities has
seen limited progress over the years. The constitutionally mandated level of women’s

11
participation in political sphere has been met11, but political parties are yet to be on board
to ensure higher level of women’s participation in political positions than mandated.
Affirmative actions in civil service has increased the number of women in the government
which indicates that this intervention is necessary for some time to come until fair inclusion
is attained. As market based incentives for women’s land entitlement (tax rebate on land
and property registration in women’s name) has served well, this scheme could be further
encouraged. It is observed that land and landed propertyis a pre-requisite for women to
have access to other resources and services for long term investment; and in spite of
various credit programs, women’s access to institutional credit is still marginal at both
individual and at household enterprises level. This poses a major impediment for
economic empowerment of women.

Economically active women are still mostly engaged in subsistence agriculture and care
economy. Those in non-agriculture sector are still largely engaged in low paying low
skilled jobs, mainly in unorganized sectors. Gains made in increasing female youth
literacy substantially over the years is yet to make optimum utilization of the youth force
due to lack of relevant employment opportunities and inability to link the available skills
to market demand for labor. Policies and laws, skills training and paid work (overseas
employment and in domestic market) are weakly enforced, and remain inadequately
monitored.Lessons have also been learnt that laws are not sufficient to end gender based
violence. They remain often ineffectiveness because of lack of law enforcement and
regular monitoring mechanism in place.

Health:Despite that all the MDG indicators relating to child health have been achieved,
the outcome is not uniform for different income, social, and geographical groups. Besides,
it will be difficult to make the same rate of progress over time without substantially scaling
up efforts. The emergence of new problems (birth defects, child violence, injuries and
accidents) and climate change add new difficult challenges for child health care that need
to be addressed. As the proposed health specific SDG targets include ending preventable
death of newborns and children, there is a need for prioritization of newborn and child
health by the government. The focused efforts of external development partners will also
be central to improving child health (NPC, 2016).

The latest progress in maternal mortality is not very encouraging and the target of
reducing it to less than 70 per hundred thousand live births requires additional efforts.
This requires universalizing maternal healthservices so as to further reduce the MMR
andto have all births attended by SBAs.As the number of deliveries in health

11
The constitution mandates one third of parliamentarian in the National Parliament to be women while that in the
Provincial and Municipal/ Village Councils to be at least 40 per cent. The recently held Municipal/Village Council
election has elected women in an unprecedented proportion – more than 40 percent of the total elected.

12
institutionsgrows, it is crucial that the quality of careis closely monitored in both the private
and publicfacilities to prevent avoidable deaths anddebilitating morbidities. In addition,
theprovision of family planning servicesthrough government, NGOs and social marketing
agenciesneed to be expanded to enhance access to family planning services. The unmet
family planning need which currently stands at 25 percent should be met for making
aspired progress in maternal and child health. The prevalence of anemia among women
of reproductive age has increased from 35 per cent in 2011 to 41 per cent in 2016 while
53 percent of the children have suffered some degree of anemia with some Provinces
having as high as 59 percent children suffering some degree of anemia (MoH, 2017).
Besides, only 78 percent of the children (age12-23 months) have received all basic
vaccines and one percent of children have not received any vaccination.These facts have
to be taken into account for universal coverage of child and maternal health.

Environment:Despite that the target related to access to drinking water has been
achieved, several concerns such as quality of water, sufficient availability of water,
equality in access to water sources, and sustainability of water resources are still to be
addressed. Though a policy of integrated water resources management has been
formulated, its implementation has been very weak. An encouraging task has been the
formulation of Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene Sector Development Plan (2016-30)
with a cost estimation of nearly Rs 700 billion at the price of 2016 which is aligned with
the SDGs. While a wide range of legislation and regulation for environment conservation
are formulated, strong institutional mechanism needs to be in place for their effective
implementation and enforcement.

The biggest challenges to reversing the loss of environmental resources in Nepal are the
cost and limited access to renewable energy services (especially for the poor),
inadequate infrastructure and lack of technical, managerial and financial skills, loss and
damage of environmental resources due to earthquakes of 2015, and lack of research on
Nepal-specific aspects of climate change(NPC, 2016). Global resources including
finance, technology and experience are yet to be mobilized to address climate change
challenges which ultimately determine several of the outcomes under SDGs.

Global partnership:The global commitments made for the flow of ODA, aid
effectiveness, access to international market, trade facilitation and aid for trade remained
unmet. In the absence of absorptive capacity, even the committed aid remained
underutilized. Development partners have shown concern on lack of ownership,
internalization, and institutionalization of donor-funded programmes, while the
government has faced with cumbersome aid conditionality, aid bureaucracy, and lack of
flexibility in implementing aided programmes. On the trade front, some of Nepal’s high
potential products for export face high tariff and non-tariff barriers. Thus reducing trade

13
barriers and deepening market access for exports still remains an unfinished global MDG
agenda.

Whileinternational cooperation in achieving MDGs was a lackluster despite firm

commitments made, most of the outcomes were the result of domestic efforts to allocate
more resources to social sectors. However, it is evident that the investment made in social
sector would only give best return if basic infrastructure facilities are also in place. This
calls for balanced prioritization of social and infrastructure development programmes
followed by judicious aid allocation among these areas. The major lesson learned while
implementing the MDGs is that development cooperation can usher economic
development and promote human development; but it requires strategic plan, aid
absorption and implementation capacities of the government, and effective national
ownership of the development agenda.

Overall, while Nepal has significantly improved the social and environmental aspects of
MDGs, several other issues including gender, social and economic inequalities, severe
infrastructure deficits, and national capacity to deliver development are yet to be fully
addressed. Policies and programs were broadly aligned with the MDGs, but theywere not
adequately reviewed, monitored and evaluated for their effectiveness in the delivery of
expected outputs and outcomes. Monitoring was mostly at an aggregated level and data
gaps remained in tracking progress at a disaggregated level. The implementation of
SDGs needs to address these gaps.

2.3 Long-term Development Vision and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable

Development

Nepal aspires to emerge as an inclusive, equitable, and prosperous middle-income

country by 2030 with the spirit of welfare state. The country aims at sustainable poverty
reduction and promotion of human development with low vulnerability and higher human
security. The state is realizing its people's increased aspirations for peace, development
and prosperity along with their claim to a greater stake in the government and society,
notably by exercising a greater voice in determining state policies along with ensuring
human security. The state transformation process is now envisioning an inclusive society
and economy, and a prosperous welfare state.

Promoting Inclusive Development and Addressing Vulnerability: Nepal's

development achievements reflect disparity in development outcome across gender,
social groups and geographical regions. The culmination of inequality has been a
protracted political instability which has weakened state institutions, slowed economic

14
growth, delayed development activities particularly in infrastructure, and pushed the
country into a vicious cycle of poverty-instability-stagnation-poverty.

Nepal's modest development achievements are also highly vulnerable as frequently

observed in terms of disasters, economic failures, financial crisis, or global shocks. The
poor are the most vulnerable and they constantly face the threat of falling into poverty.
This has been evidenced from the recent earthquake, which pushed nearly three percent
of the households into absolute poverty. Thus, sustainable poverty reduction calls for
sufficient attention to the circular nature of poverty and human security linked through
vulnerability12. Although reduction of poverty in Nepal is noticeable (NPC, 2016), many
people remain on the threshold of poverty, and are prone to fall into it with minor shocks.

Graduation from Least Developed Country Status: Nepal is one of the 48 least
developed countries of the world of which only 7 including Nepal are in Asia13. The country
was, for the first time, included in the LDC category as one of the 25 countries in 1971,
which expanded to 48 in 2014. Since the beginning, Nepal has been advocating on the
causes of LDCs and actively engaged in global policy dialogues. This engagement was
more pronounced when Nepal was Chair of the LDC group in 2010. Along with this, the
country has geared its development efforts towards graduating from the LDC status.

As globally observed, graduation from LDC status is not only a difficult task but also the
incentives for graduation are unclear so far. This is evident from only four countries14
being graduated from LDC status so far and two more (Equatorial Guinea and Vanuatu)
scheduled to graduate by 2017. Expecting the Istanbul Programme of Action (IPoA)15
(2011-2020) to materialize and Nepal's efforts to address economic growth and
vulnerability being successful, there is great expectation that Nepal will come out of the
LDC tag self-imposed by the state of its underdevelopment.

The government has prepared a LDC graduation strategy paper which indicates Nepal's
prospects for achieving the target by 2022. Of the three graduation criteria namely (i) per
capita Gross National Income (GNI), (ii) Human Assets, and (iii) Economic Vulnerability,
the country has achieved two of them, but would be lagging behind in terms of GNI per
capita. The country has not been able to make rapid headway in GNI per capita; it was

12
Although measuring vulnerability has been a subject of wide discussion, broadly it has been broken down
into the risk, options for managing the risk or the risk responses and outcome in terms of welfare loss (JICA,
2006).
13
UN DESA Report May 2016.
14
Botswana (in 1994), Cape Verde (in 2007), Maldives (in 2011) and Samoa (in 2014)
15
The IPoA contain eight priority areas of development for the LDCs - productive capacity, agriculture, food
security and rural development, trade, commodities, human and social development, multiple crises, and
other emerging challenges. Nepal's development priority during the remaining period of IPoA
implementation will have to be compatible with these proposed areas (UNCTAD, 2014).

15
estimated to be US$ 757 in FY 2015/16and US$ 862 in FY 2016/17 with an average
annual growth of about 10 percent during the last decade (MoF, 2017).

The current trend of economic growth is unlikely to meet the threshold per capita income
for graduating from LDC status, although technically the country will be eligible for
graduation with two other conditions almost met. Besides, as the country is facing the
problems like high rate of poverty, huge trade deficits, high underemployment rate,
income inequality and low quality of life, moving towards middle-income status is a
daunting task. Several factors including subsistence agriculture, deteriorated industrial
environment, power shortage, and weak public service delivery mechanism have resulted
in a low level of economic growth. Therefore, a great challenge exists to sustain the
achievements and narrow down the gaps between GNI threshold level and the current
status. Strategic directions and actions will be needed towards sustaining achievements
in Economic Vulnerability, improving the status of Human Assets and accelerating GNI
Per Capita for meaningful graduation from LDC status.

Achieving the Unfinished Agenda of Millennium Development Goals: Nepal was one
of 189 signatory countries of Millennium Declaration which vowed for global freedom,
equality, tolerance, and solidarity. With the development of the MDGs based on the
Declaration, Nepal was one of the early countries to mainstream MDGs into periodic plans
and national budgets. The country has made significant progress in achieving its MDGs
and has been globally recognized for the impressive outcomes despite the decade-long
armed conflict, constitutional and political transitions, and economic vulnerabilities and
natural disasters.

However, the overall MDG achievements mask the disparity in the outcomes by gender,
social group, and geography. Also the social focus of development spending of the
government resulted in under-investment in economic sectors which undermined the
progress in physical infrastructure which has constrained high economic growth. Besides,
the governance deficit continued towards effective service delivery particularly at the sub
national and local levels. The unfinished MDG tasks including the disparities in the
achieved outcomes and governance challenges require to be built in the SDGs and their
implementation strategy.

The MDGs Final Status Report (NPC, 2016) highlights on several unfinished agenda of
the MDG with particular focus on absolute poverty, malnutrition, universal school
enrolment, maternal mortality, and access to reproductive health facility. Besides, the
report also flags on the quality, inclusion and equality aspects of the MDGs achieved in
quantitative terms –such as in education, child health, and environment. The SDGs have
to meet these gaps even before embarking on making further progress.

16
Meeting Global and Regional Development Commitments: Nepal, as a member of
the UN, has been signatory to various global and regional development initiatives like
SAARC Development Goals (SADGs), UN Programmes of Actions for LDCs, Rio
Declaration, COPE 21, Beijing Declaration and Platform of Actions, Rio +20, and SE4ALL,
SENDAI Framework for Disaster Risk reduction, etc. to name a few. As one of the
members of SAARC, Nepal was committed to develop and implement regional
development strategy, known as SADGs in line with MDGs. The SADGs were aligned
with MDGs and support from various UN agencies was mobilized to implement and
monitor them. However, SAARC itself being non-functional for political disharmony
between nations, the implementation could not take much momentum during the last
decade.

Nepal, as an active member of the global initiative for sustainable development, has been
participating in the global forums on such issues and formulating policies and programs
to reflect the global concerns. Nepal has realized that poverty as well as excessive
consumption by affluent populations place damaging stress on the environment, and has
recognized the need to redirect national plans and policies to ensure that all economic
decisions fully take into account any environmental impact. There is much greater
awareness of and concern over the growing scarcity of water and other natural resources.
The country has been active in global climate change initiatives and has taken up several
interventions towards climate change mitigation, adaptation, and promotion of low carbon
economy.

The 2030 Development Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals:With the

encouraging achievements of the MDGs and a big lesson learnt on what kind of global
development agenda works at the national level and what not, Nepal is committed to be
part of the global Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. While the implementation of
MDGs have significantly improved social and environmental indicators of the country,
several other issues such as human rights, access to justice, inequality, social inclusion,
infrastructure facility, and sustainable development, which were not explicitly addressed
in the MDGs, are now being taken care of by the proposed SDGs. Nepal has started
engaging itself in the operationalization of SDGs at the country level with long term
development strategy being aligned with them.

The new long-term development agenda have been derived from the national objectives
of graduation from LDC status by 2022, closing the development gaps in terms of gender,
social groups, and geographical locations, and moving towards shared prosperity by all
citizens. A country marred by gender, social and geographical exclusion, and inequality
in the MDGs and human development outcomes, Nepal needs to better target the delivery

17
of development to the hardest–to-reach segment of the society, those who have still been
excluded from the development outcome and those who need compensated action, being
overlooked in the past16. Nepal’s development agenda for the next several years,
including the SDGs, has to consolidate and sustain the MDG achievements made so far,
acceleratethe pace of meeting unmet targets as early as possible, and focus on economic
growth strategy which would be instrumental in achieving several other goals.

2.4 Nepal’s Progress in SDGs Implementation

Early initiatives:Nepal was one of the signatories of the 2030 Sustainable Development
Agenda agreed by the Members of the United Nations in September 2015. The
government initiated preparing the National Report on SDGs for making use of it in the
global negotiation process and for preparing a 3 year periodic plan beginning mid-July
2016. Nepal was one of the early countries to prepare National Report on SDGs, develop
SDGs indicators for the country even before such indicators were globally worked out and
initiate dissemination of the SDGs with the national stakeholders. In doing so, the global
goals were adapted and targets fine-tuned with the country context. The report has
worked as the key background document for integrating SDGs into the planning process.

The government has aligned its periodic plan with the SDGs as was the case for the
MDGs. Nepal was one of the early countries to publish MDG progress report, the first
being done as early as in 2002. Periodic reviews of MDG progress were made through
progress reports done in 2005, 2008, and 2013 and through Terminal Report in 2016.
Attempts were made to recast plan priorities based on the feedback from the MDG
progress reports. The MDGs terminal report flags on the unfinished MDGs agenda to be
carried out under the era of the SDGs.

The government has initiated an exercise to set strategies and priorities for the next 15
years to ensure that the long term planning horizon is consistent with the SDGs and also
to guide the medium term (3-year) plans. As the medium term vision is to graduate from
the LDC status, the long term vision is to develop as a middle income country by 2030.
Key drivers of the growth for the next 15 years are identifies as agriculture and small
businesses, physical infrastructure, tourism, energy, and services like finance and retail
trade (NPC, 2015).

The SDGs based planning opportunity in Nepal is reflected in the promulgation of new
constitution in 2015 with several of the SDGs being already enshrined as fundamental
rights of the citizens. Moreover, the Constitution of Nepal has enshrined right to basic and

16
This group includes the ultra-poor people and the excluded ones because of their sex, age, ethnicity,
disability, or geographical location.

18
secondary education, right to basic health, right to clean water and sanitation, right to
food, right to clean energy, right to housing and right to clean energy as fundamental
rights of the citizens. As the fundamental rights will have to be progressively realized in
the medium term, priorities need to be accorded to the SDG targets which help achieve
these constitutional commitments.

Process of integrating the SDGs into periodic plan: The government started new
periodic plan (14th Plan) from FY 2016/17 which has embedded SDGs. The consultative
process for the preparation of the Plan had takenSDGs at the centre-stage of discussion.
Among stakeholders such as local government officials, cooperatives, NGOs, civil society
and community organizations and the private sector, SDGs were the main areas of
discussion during the consultation. Annual budget for FY 2016/17 prepared on the basis
of the 14th Plan integrates several SDGs into the planning process. However, as not all
the indicators of SDG targets are so far captured in the Plan document, the subsequent
Plans would require to capture the missing links between SDGs and national plans.

The Sustainable Development Goals National (Preliminary)Report (NPC, 2015) has set
periodic targets or milestones for each goal and has identified 255 indicators to track the
progress towards achieving the targets and the goals. The Report has indicated several
issues pertaining to setting national targets, particularly in poverty, hunger, and
deprivations. Given the current level of absolute poverty (21.6% in 2015), it sets more
realistic target for absolute poverty at 5 per cent (national definition) by 2030. Similarly, it
has set more realistic targets for several other goals such as in hunger, health, gender
and water supply. More negotiated targets are set in infrastructure and environment. The
interim goalposts for the indicators suggested in the SDG Report has been instrumental
to workout periodic targets for the indicators and thus to integrate them in the periodic
plans.

Budget and annual programs for FY 2016/17 had set SDGs into consideration while
prioritizing and allocating resources. The budget allocations in the annual programs were
audited against the SDGs, also to check if the allocations are balanced across SDG
areas. The audit shows almost two-thirds (65 per cent) of the annual budget allocated in
three infrastructure related SDG areas - namely the Goals 7, 9 and 11. Of the total budget
allocated for FY 2016/17, 18per centwas allocated on social sectors like education,
health, water supply and sanitation; and, 13 per centhad gone to directly address poverty
and hunger (Goals 1 and 2). The remaining 4 per cent had gone to all the rest of the goals
like that on reducing inequality, promoting sustainable consumption and production,
protecting the environment, adapting climate change and promoting good governance for
peaceful societies.

19
SDGs Partnership: The government has forged partnership with non-state actors on
SDGs implementation. Private sector being the key player in achieving SDGs, the
government has been working closely with the apex organizations of the chambers of
commerce and industries. The Cooperative Societies have drawn their slogan for the year
2017 as “Cooperatives for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals”. Nearly half a
million people participated in the Cooperative Day rally on 2nd April with slogans of
‘cooperatives for sustainable development’ to show their solidarity with other stake
holders in SDGs implementation. National Federation of Cooperatives and various
cooperative organizations at the district level are arranging trainings and orientation
programmes on SDGs and their relevance with cooperative movement. The NGOs
Federation, an apex body of NGOs, has undertaken series of discourse on SDGs right
from the negotiation stage of 2030 development agenda and they are now on board in
SDGs implementation. It has held series of discussions on the SDGs and the role of civil
society in their achievement. Several other NGOs representing women, dalit, and other
target groups have also been engaged in the policy dialogue and finding definite role in
the SDGs process. NGO Federation Nepal and its member NGOs have also been
conducting various SDGs consultations both at national and regional level. Civil Society
Forum on SDGs has already been created.

Initial state of partnership on SDGs implementation with other stakeholders has remained
encouraging. The government, in association with the UN agencies, is using celebrities,
press, and social media for public awareness and advocacy for broader public
participation to carry forward the 2030 Agenda. An informal SDGs group has been
created in the Parliament. Few rounds of orientations have been organized with them
including a training to the chief whips of the political party representatives in the
Parliament.

Trade unions and their apex organizations are also engaged in SDGs dialogues and in
finding their roles in their implementation. A series of such discussions are held around
social protection and the achievement of SDGs through the labour market interventions.
The media is also now coming on board regarding its role in the dissemination of the 2030
Agenda and in the monitoring of their progress. Several other civil society organizations
are showing interest to work with the government in the implementation and monitoring
of the SDGs process.

Data base, monitoring and evaluation framework:NPC being the nodal agency for
most of the development data base, it has been working to fill in the gap between data
required for SDGs monitoring and the existing data availability for the same. As
developing comprehensive and disaggregated data base for planning and monitoring is
critical for achieving the SDGs, the upcoming surveys are being restructured to capture
the SDGs data requirements.

20
The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), the nodal agency for compiling statistics and
reporting, has taken up some initiatives towards SDGs data management. They include
the formation of an inter-Ministerial SDGs indicators coordination committee, participation
in UN Statistical Department (UNSD) indicator management project, and engagement in
governance thematic committee under NPC. Besides, CBS programs are made SDGs
centric for generating and disseminating necessary data for SDGs monitoring.

Several initiatives are taken in monitoring and evaluation aspects. The Monitoring and
Evaluation Guidelines issued by NPC in 2013 aims to ensure responsibility and
accountability among the key constituents engaged in service delivery; enable appraisal
and measurement of direct and indirect impacts of development interventions on the lives
of people; help ensure results from development investments; and improve effectiveness
and result-orientation in future policies and programs by obtaining feedback from past
experiences. However, this will only deliver results if capacity of monitoring institutions is
strengthened and strong data base as well as reporting system is in place to make
monitoring truly result based.

The national Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) system Nepal is integrated into the
development planning process particularly since as back as the Eighth Plan (1992-1997).
The system has passed through significant changes to create enabling environment to
materialize the results-based approach to develop at national, sub-national and sectoral
levels. Monitoring &Evaluation Bill has been drafted to provide the legal base for
strengthening the M&E system. The bill is under review in the Ministry of Law, Justice,
and Parliamentary Affairs. The NPC is planning to review the National M&E Guidelines
prepared in 2013 so as to make it SDGs-friendly and to operationalize the Global
Evaluation Agenda.

The NPC has come up with Evaluation Action Plan (2016-20) with the objective of
enhancing the national evaluation capacity and for better targeting of SDGs for their
effective implementation for the next 15 years. The specific objectives of the Action Plan
are to(i) create an enabling environment for evaluation of SDGs to make them relevance
from Nepal's perspective, (ii) develop the institutions capacity of the evaluation
commissions and individual capacity of the evaluators, (iii) enhance networking and
coordination, (iv) undertake evaluation and monitor SDGs, and (v) document and
disseminate the evaluation findings for their better use in refining SDG policies,
programmes and interventions for inclusive, gender responsive and equity focused
planning and implementation (NPC, 2016a)

21
2.5 Constitution of Nepal and Localization of SDGs

The Constitution of Nepal 2015 envisages a3 tiered, devolved and decentralized

architecture of governance, comprising of the Federal, Provincial and Local governments.
The aim is clearly to bring the government closer to the people and to enhance the speed
and quality of development by providing space for peoples’ participation in development
governance. As the Constitutionaims to actualize its vision of building an inclusive nation,
it ensures that key government services are accessible to all citizens and are delivered in
a transparent and accountable fashion at all tiers of the government.

The Constitution refers to spheres of governance and service deliveries as (a) Exclusively
Federal Functions, (b) Exclusively Provincial Functions, (c) Exclusively Local Functions,
(d) Concurrent Functions of Federal and Provincial Governments, and (e) Concurrent
Functions of Federal, Provincial and Local Governments. Accordingly, many of the SDGs
such as basic and secondary education, basic health and sanitation, agriculture,
cooperatives, local infrastructure, water supply and sanitation, environment and
biodiversity, social protection, and disaster management fall under Local governments.
Some of these functions are concurrent with the Federal and Provincial Governments as
well. As these functions have yet to be unbundled and specified to each level of the
government, confusion and conflict may arise among different tiers of governments for
integrating SDGs into their own plans and programmes, resulting toa risk of under-
delivery of SDGs and inefficient delivery of basic services. The government has taken
some initiatives to specify the concurrent functions of each tier of the government but it
has yet to come up with enabling law for its enforcement.

As the SDGs have to be operationalized at the provincial and local levels for their
effective implementation and properly addressing the issues of targeted group of
people, elected government at those levels would be critical for public accountability. A
milestone in this process has been the election for Local Governments held in two
stages in May and June 2017 which are going to elect more than 36 thousand people’s
representatives to run the local governments. The election has been socially very
inclusive with at least 40 percent women (inclusive of one dalit women in each ward of
the local government units) are ensured. This elected representatives would be critically
important foundation for the implementation of SDGs with accountability to the local
community.

2.6 Existing Policies and Institutional Environment for SDGs Implementation

Nepal has been party to several UN Conventions on sustainable development including

those on energy, environment, climate change, gender-based violence, anti-corruption,
good governance and human rights. Besides, the country has set its domestic policies

22
to achieve sustainable development through inclusive social and economic development
strategies. The Constitutionhas adequately covered the issues of fundamental rights of
the citizens and the responsibility of the state to deliver them. The devolution of power
and responsibility to the local governments to deliver social, environmental and
economic services to the people under the Constitution are in line with what have been
proposed in the SDGs.

The country has opted for mixed economy with government encompassing the private
and the cooperative sectors for the promotion of inclusive and rapid development. The
complementary role of each of these actors would be instrumental in promoting
sustainable and inclusive economic growth, poverty reduction and delivery of basic
social services outside the domain of the government. The country's liberal trade,
industry, and financial policies are expected to promote economic growth so as to meet
the income threshold for graduating from LDC status and leading to medium income
country by next 14 years.

The current macroeconomic situation of the country provides some space for the
government to implement SDG interventions. The robust tax system mostly driven by
scientific value added tax, low domestic and foreign indebtedness, and highly vibrant
financial system offer larger investment opportunities to both the government and the
private sector. Foreign exchange reserves at more than 40 percent of GDP and worth
more than a year's merchandize imports provide cushions against foreign currency
deficit for import financing. Emerging role of private sector in infrastructure, education
and health are complementing government functions in those areas. The country
possesses well-defined sectoral policies in most of the proposed SDGs but they require
refinements and reorientation as the means to achieve the goals. Also the fundamental
rights and directive principles enshrined in the Constitution require several new policies
and strategies for their implementation which will be complementary to the achievement
of SDGs.

In agriculture, the government has formulated and started implementing Agriculture

Development Strategy (ADS) which is supposed to guide the agricultural sector over 20
years beginning from 2014. This strategy chalks down a 10-year action plan and
roadmap for the agriculture sector including food sufficiency, sustainability,
competitiveness, and inclusion. Implementation of ADS is expected to address the food
and nutrition security needs of the most disadvantaged rural population including
lactating and pregnant women, backward community, and groups in disadvantaged
regions.

In health, the National Health Sector Strategy (2015-2020) guides the decisions across
the sector including public and private services and partnership with external donors. A

23
 multi-sector nutrition plan for accelerated reduction of maternal and child under nutrition
is in operation.

In education, School Sector Development Plan (SSDP) exists as a long-term strategic

plan to achieving the goals and objectives of Basic and Secondary education that the
government has envisaged. The SSRP also introduces new reforms characterized by
strategic intervention such as the restructuring of school education, improvement in the
quality of education, and institutionalization of performance accountability. While School
Sector Development Plan is being implemented, inclusive education policy for persons
with disability has been announced, and higher education policy is already in place.

In gender equality, Nepal has recognized violence against women and girls as crime
has amended Acts and policy to protect women from violence, and established
mechanisms to facilitate access to justice for the victims17. The government has
prepared a National Strategy to end Child Marriage. Witchcraft Allegation (Crime and
Punishment) Control Bill has been passed by the Legislative Parliament in 2016 to
reduce social and cultural harmful practices. A 10-year National Policy and Action Plan
for Persons with Disability has been formulated.

In water and sanitation, WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) is in operation. The
government has introduced Sanitation and Hygiene Master Plan in 2011 to maintain
uniformity and standards in program approaches. Particularly, the master plan focuses
on ODF as the bottom line for all sanitation interventions, and envisages universal
access to sanitation facilities in water supply and sanitation in project areas. Recently,
the government has come up with Nepal Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene Sector
Development Plan (2016-30) which is fully aligned with the SDGs.

In energy, the government has come up in 2016 with an Approach Paper to end Energy
Crisis and Electricity Development Decade which intends to produce 10 thousand MW
of electricity by 2025 and ensure energy for all. Similarly, Biomass Energy Strategy 2017
has been formulated to promote biomass as reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy
resource to address the increasing energy demand.

In climate change issues, Nepal has prepared and started implementing National
Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) for adapting to extreme climate events and
variability through an extensive country-driven consultative process. Also Local

17
Some of them include: Amendment in civil code -2020 with provision of women's right to divorce, penalty
for polygamy and increase in the punishment for rapists, National Commission on Women Act, 2006;
Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act, 2007,Domestic Violence (Crime and Punishment) Act,
2000; Act to Prevent Sexual Harassment at Workplace, 2014; the Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances and
Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act (2014); National Plan of Action Against Trafficking in Persons,
Especially Trafficking in Women and Children, 2012 and its Implementation Plan, 2014; and National Plan
of Action for Controlling Gender Based Violence and Promoting Gender Empowerment, 2012.

24
Adaptation Plan for Action (LAPA) has been formulated with the twin objectives
implementing adaptation actions, and integrating climate change into local development
planning and implementation.

Nepal is fourth most vulnerable country affected by climate change;To address its
adverse effects, adaptation practices are being developed and up-scaled. Stress
tolerant varieties and resource conservation technologies are being promoted. Agro-
biodiversity conservation and use has become a part of regular program. Also,
community seed banks are being promoted in nodal locations of the country.

There are several master plans in infrastructure particularly in transport, housing and
urban development, etc. These plans and policies can be retrofitted with the SDGs and
targets refined to meet the 2030 outcomes. Policies and strategies in the areas of
sustainable production and consumption, inequality, employment and social protection
also exist, but they are fragmented and lack synergic approach. They can also be
audited and realigned with SDGs.

The government has enacted Good Governance Act in 2008 to ensure that government
administrative functions serve greater interest of nation and people, promote equity and
inclusiveness, enforce rule of law, guarantee human rights, ensure transparency,
objectivity, accountability and honesty in its functions, decentralization and devolution
of power, and local participation in development. However, with new constitutional set
up, Local Government Act is being drafted to legally empower local governments to
carry on their legislative, executive and judiciary functions and deliver development and
public service at the very local level.

Despite democratic and participatory policies and institutions, there are several other
institutional challenges for the effective implementation of the SDGs. As Nepal is
passing through a prolonged political transition with institutions of the federal, provincial
and local governments yet to crystalize, the governance and peace building process
remains delicate. Also as many of the existing institutions are not functioning effectively,
the challenge is to put the institutional mechanism quickly in order.

The current governance system is marred by several deficits in the legal system
covering a wide range of areas like natural resources particularly land use, water
resource, industrial activities, finance, education, health, labour market, and social
protection. As the Constitution has the provisions of making it effective through
enactment of numerous laws, it is expected that the necessary laws would be passed
within a short time, as any delay in these legislations will waste time of operationalization
of the Constitution.

So far, the government institutions are mostly oriented to deliver administrative tasks
and follow stringent bureaucratic practices. This has been a concern for pro-people and

25
pro-development service of the bureaucracy. The Local Governments are just at the
formation stage with low level of staffing and their planning and programming quality.
Various institutional arrangements, including proper staffing and budgeting, are being
made to build local capacity in planning, implementing and monitoring development
programmes.

Politicization of bureaucracy, strong trade unionism, lack of public accountability and

cases of corruption has raised question on the performance of the bureaucracy to
deliver the expected output of the SDGs. The oversight agencies like the parliamentary
committees, anti-corruption bodies, auditor general, and NPC are focused to ensure
good governance and effective service delivery. Institutionalization of SDGs at the
parliamentary level has been initiated but apex monitoring mechanism is yet to emerge.

Institutions of the private sector are crucial in promoting inclusive, high economic
growth, creating jobs and delivering goods and services which could be done as a
business manner. The emerging institutions of the private sector, although divided and
confined to commercial business, can play a critical role in industrialization,
infrastructure development, and promoting economic activities and thus complementing
the government in several areas of development. As such, apex organizations of the
private sector are working on several SDGs to seek their role in its implementation and
to partner with the government in strategic areas.

The roles of cooperatives and community organizations in mobilizing local resources,

communities and delivering essential services are encouraging. Currently, more than
33 thousand cooperative societies are serving more than6 million members - more than
50 percent of them being women - and mobilizing nearly Rs. 300 billion of financial
resources (DOC, 2017). Community organizations like Forest Uses' Group and Water
Users’ Groups are effectively working to conserve environment, sustainably use forest
and water, and empower local community. Micro-finance is expanding rapidly
ensuringmore than 1.5 million households with access to finance. They are equally
important in channeling remittances and providing micro-insurance services. Expansion
of these activities would be extremely helpful for achieving inclusive and sustainable
development. The government is working closely with these organizations to carry
forward SDGs agenda through their activities.

The role of youth, civil society and the press becomes critical in policy advocacy, in
monitoring the government and non-government plans, budgets and their
implementation, and in providing feedback to improve the outcome. So, while bringing
these stakeholders on board for effective implementation and monitoring would be
important, the presence of vibrant civil society and the press would be an added
advantage for the state to carry on SDGs.

26
Finally, the role of community organizations in formulating, implementing, and
monitoring SDGs becomes critical for operationalization of the same at local levels. The
existing strong community organizations like the users groups in forestry, water
resource, and local infrastructure management will work as important local institutions
to implement the SDGs at the community level.

In order to coordinate SDGs implementation across various sectors, the government has
constituted SDGs Steering Committee under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister with
key Ministers, VC and Officials of NPC, and representatives of private sector, NGOs and
cooperatives as members in the Steering Committee. A SDGs working committee is
constituted under VC of NPC to coordinate SDGs implementation at the national as well
as sub-national levels. Thematic working groups are formed under the convenership of
Members of the NPC with secretaries of the relevant Ministries as co-conveners and other
concerned agencies as members of the groups.

The NPC upholds the responsibility of integrating SDGs in the planning and annual
programming process and coordinating SDGs implementation across different layers of
the government, private sector, cooperatives, and civil society organizations. Besides, as
the monitoring and evaluation of the plans and annual programs also belongs to NPC, it
is also a responsible for tracking the SDGs progress and refining the development
programs based on the feedback from monitoring and evaluation of programs and
projects.

27
Chapter III: Targets and Indicators for Sustainable Development Goals

3.1 Overview of National Global SDGs, Their Targets and Indicators

The Sustainable Development Agenda has come in global discussion since more than
two decades. It is structured on three dimensions: economic, social and environment,
which are envisioned to evolve concomitantly centered on inclusivity and equity. Based
on the sustainable development agenda, the SDGs were first formally discussed at the
United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in June
2012 (Rio+20), and then in the UNGA in September 2014. Ahead of the MDG deadline,
the UN Open Working Group (OWG) for SDGs agreed a proposed set of 17 SDGs with
169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable development issues for post 2015 till
2030. The SDGs have replaced the MDGs from January 2016 and have emerged as the
globally agreed common development framework for the planet, people and their
prosperity. As the MDGs provided a shared framework for global action and cooperation
on development from 2000 to the end of 2015, SDGs have been built on the MDGs
covering a wider range of rights based sustainable development issues beyond those
encompassed in the MDGs. As the goals and targets of the SDGs were agreed in the UN
General Assembly in September 2015, more than 230 indicators for measuring and
tracking their progress have also been worked out.

There are several issues related with the goals, targets and indicators of 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development for Nepal. First, the targets are highly ambitious for several
goals and have to be negotiated to make them more realistic. Examples include ‘ending
poverty (of global definition), hunger and malnutrition, ending preventable newborns and
under five child mortality, ending all forms of gender discrimination, and ending
deprivation in basic services like safe water, sanitation and modern energy. Unlike MDGs
which were non-negotiable, there remains some room for adapting the targets of SDGs
in the country context. This is also for the reason that some targets are specific to least
developed countries and some targets are negotiable given no exact quantitative goalpost
for them.

Second, some of the targets within the SDGs are less relevant for Nepal while additional
targets would be necessary to address the country specific challenge. For instance, in
SDG 5 (gender goal), targets related to Chhaupadi (untouchability during menstruation)
would be more important than other harmful practices specified in the global list of targets.
Third, global targets set for some SDGs are insufficient; some are only proximate; they
overly depend on the market than on the state interventions; and they do not properly
work for least developed countries like Nepal. There is not much space for cooperative
sector in the global indicators while this must be given due role in our context.

28
Fourth, one of the goals related to Oceans, Seas, and Marine Resources (SDG 14) is
irrelevant for Nepal while some other goals like Combating Climate Change (Goal 13) has
less to do with Nepal than other countries. Some of the goals like Sustainable
Consumption and Production Pattern (Goal 12) and Reducing Inequality among
Countries (part of Goal 10) are to do more with the developed world which are leading
the global economy. Finally, as the goals and targets overlap, one indicator may serve
more than one target. Thus there is a possibility of duplication of the same indicator for
more than one target. Avoiding this duplication would then create further problem such
as finding another appropriate indicator.

Overall, all the global SDG targets and indicators are not fully applicable to Nepal’s
country condition; nor are they sufficient to depict the country specific SDG issues.
Besides, many of such targets and indicators would require heavy data which the country
will take years to generate. However, they have to be retained for global comparison, and
efforts are to be made to generate data for them at the earliest. But at the same time,
additional indicators have to be identified for serving the national context and also to
proximate the targets. Thus, it is obvious that the proposed national indicators are bound
to be many more than the global indicators18.

Disaggregated indicators are what development stakeholder all look for. The disability of
the government to understand how people of different sex, age, capability, geographic
location or income levels fare under the development process would hamper the design
and implementation of strategies to tackle discrimination and ensure achievement of the
SDGs for all. Also progress is often made amongst those groups which are easiest to
reach or whose situations are the easiest to ameliorate, and many of the poorest and
most vulnerable continue to remain behind. For this reason, the indicators for SDGs have
been suggested to be disaggregated, where relevant, by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity,
migratory status, disability and geographic location19. There would be at least 6-7 types
of disaggregation necessary to monitor the progress in detail. If the 230 plus global
indicators are to be disaggregated by such a way, the total list of indicators would easily
exceed 600 even if only most important targets are covered with disaggregated indicators.
So, for practical purpose, the national level indicators have been kept as small as
possible, of course without compromising their dire necessity, and disaggregation has
been made as possible. For those indicators specified more in the aggregated level, it is

18
The total number of indicators listed in this report is more than 425. However, about 10 indicators repeat
under two or three different targets. Thus actual number of indicators in the list is 415. This is exclusive of
the global indicators to be jointly monitored at the national and global levels. The indicators contained in
this report are taken from the Report of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development
Goal Indicatorsagreed upon at the UN Statistical Commission held in March 2017.
19
UN General Assembly Resolution 68/261, United Nations.

29
proposed that working level indicators of each sector ministry or agency will have to work
out disaggregated indicators and report to the national agency responsible for monitoring.

3.2 Proposed SDG Targets and Indicators

SDG 1 - End poverty in all its forms everywhere: This goal proposes to (i) eradicate,
by 2030, extreme poverty for all people everywhere, (ii) reduce at least by half the
proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty as nationally defined,
(iii) implement appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, (iv) have equal
rights to economic resources, natural resources, and technology as well as access to
basic services, and (v) build the resilience of the poor and the vulnerable people to
economic, social and environmental shocks, disasters, and climate-related extreme
events

Using an international benchmark for extreme poverty (US$ 1.25 per day), Nepal has
made substantial progress in reducing poverty, as extreme poverty stood at 23.720
percent and nationally defined poverty remained at 21.6 percent in 2015 compared to 31
percent in 2004. Also, the poverty at US $ 1.9 per day stood at 36 percent. The poverty
gap ratio narrowed to 5.6 percent in 201521 from 7.6 percent in 2004. Poverty has fallen
not just nationally but across all of its major dimensions as economic vulnerability index
has also come down to 0.246 from 0.267 a few years before. Multidimensional poverty
index, which captures dwelling, family assets and state of utilities in counting poverty
along with education and health, stood at 44.2 per cent in 2014. This is broadly an
indication of poor living condition(Annex Table 1).

The SDG 1 targets for the year 2030 have been set against the existing poverty situation
and the ambition the country has to take. Accordingly, Nepal proposes to reduce extreme
poverty to less than five percent, reduce the poverty gap to 2.8 percent, raise per capita
income to US$ 2,500 in 2030 from US$ 766 in 2015. Similarly, target for nationally defined
poverty in 2030 is less than five percent. The MPI is targeted to decline to less than 10
percent in 2030 from more than 44 percent in 2015. To address poverty faster at the given
income growth on average, the consumption share of bottom 20 percent household is
targeted to increase to 12 percent in 2030 from 5 percent in 2015. Similarly, social
protection expenditure is targeted to reach 15 percent of budget in 2030 from 11 percent
in 2015 and economic vulnerability index to improve down to less than 18.9 in 2030 from
26.8 in 2015 (Annex Table 1).

20
https://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx
21
Statistics from 2014 is quoted due to paucity of data.

30
SDG 2 - End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote
sustainable agriculture: SDG 2 has major targets of (i) ending hunger by 2030 and
ensuring access by all people safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round, (ii) ending
all forms of malnutrition, (iii) doubling agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale
food producers, (iv) ensuring sustainable food production systems and implement
resilient agricultural practices, and (v) maintaining by 2020 the genetic diversity of seeds,
cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species,
including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national,
regional and international levels.

Nepal has progressed in reducing the proportion of people suffering from hunger. The
nutritional status of children has also improved. However, still 29 percent children aged
6–59 months are underweight, while stunting (low height for age) and wasting (low weight
for height) for children of under five years of age are 37 percent and 11.3 percent
respectively (Annex Table 2). Anaemia remains a major child health problem for almost
22.6 percent of the children. Anaemia amongst women of reproductive age also remains
high at 35.6 percent. It is observed that two-thirds (41 percent) of the child population
aged 0-59 months has suffered with undernourishment, while close to one-third (32.3
percent) of the children do not consume food adequately.

Livestock and crops are the major components of integrated agriculture system in the
country, and they contribute significantly to end hunger, achieve food security and
improved nutrition. However, land productivity remains low at 3.6 metric tons per hectare.
At present, only two-fifth of the total arable land has been irrigated round the year, one-
fourth of the Nepali farmers do not have their own land, and most of the financial
institutions are not very much interested to provide financial services to agriculture. This
overall scenario is reflected in low Global Food Security Score, where Nepal scores 45
out of 100 (Annex Table 2).

The proposed specific targets for SDG 2 include reduction in prevalence of

undernourishment (measure of sufficiency of access to food at country level) to 3 percent
and prevalence of underweight children under five years of age to 5 percent in 2030. The
other targets are to decrease the percentage of households with inadequate food
consumption to 3 percent in 2015 from 36 percent in 2030 and to reduce the prevalence
of anaemia among women of reproductive age and children to 9 and 6 percent
respectively in 2030. The target for food grain production is an increase by at least 40
percent in 2030 from the current level, and improvement in overall Food Security Score
to 90 in 2030 (Annex Table 2).

SDG 3 - Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages: This goal
contains targets which include (i) reducing, by 2030, the global maternal mortality ratio

31
to less than 70 per 100,000 live births, (ii) ending preventable deaths of newborns and
children under 5 years of age, (iii) ending the epidemics of AIDS, TB, malaria and
neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other
communicable diseases, (iv) reducing by one third premature mortality from Non-
communicable Diseases (NCDs) through prevention and treatment and promote mental
health and wellbeing, and (v) strengthening the prevention and treatment of substance
abuse, including narcotic drug abuse and harmful use of alcohol. The Goal also includes
halving by 2020 the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents and
ensuring, by 2030, universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services,
including for family planning, information and education, and the integration of
reproductive health into national strategies and programmes, among others.

The progress in health sector so far is encouraging. The NMR and U5MR have come
down to 23, and 38 per 1,000 live births in 2015 respectively. Similarly, MMR has also
declined to 258 (per 100,000 live births), and several recent observations indicate that
this must have further decreased as the Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) has
increased to 49.6 percent in 2014, while the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has decreased to
2.3 in 2015 (Annex Table 3).

Currently, HIV prevalence for the overall population aged 15-49 years, and youth
population aged 15-24 years are 0.23 and 0.03 percent respectively. The prevalence of
TB, leprosy, Lymphatic filariasis, and Soil Transmitted Helminthes have declined
markedly to 211(per 100,000 live births), 0.83 (per 10,000), 13 and 15 percent
respectively as reported in 2015. Similarly, the number of cases of Malaria, Kala-azar,
Dengue, Rabies, Trachoma, and Cysticercoids has also decreased (Annex Table 3).Now
Nepal needs to combat with hepatitis, water-borne diseases, and some communicable
diseases.

Premature mortality from NCDs is in increasing trend in the country, as it is evident from
the NCD deaths out of all deaths being 43.7 percent of all deaths. The incidence of suicide
cases is also in increasing, as the rate of suicide is 25 per 100,000 population. Mortality
related to Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) is nearly 34 per 100,000 population (Annex Table
3).

The proposed SDG 3 targets include reduction of MMR to less than 70 per 100 thousand
live birthsby 2030which is in line with the global target. The child health targets include
reduction of preventable death of newborn and children to less than one percent.
However, for overall newborn and U5 mortality rates, the target is to reduce them from
21 and 38 per thousand live births to 10 and 22 respectively by 2030. The other targets
include almostelimination of the prevalence of HIV, TB,Malaria and other Tropical

32
Diseases, and water borne diseases. Targets for 2030 are also set to reduce NCDs to
one–thirdof existing level and increase health care expenditure to at least 7 per cent from
5.5 per cent in 2015. The other targets are to increase CPR (modern methods) to 75
percent, raise the proportion of births attended by SBA to 90 percent, increase institutional
delivery to 90 percent and provide post natal care for 90 percent of the mothers (Annex
Table 3).

SDG 4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong
learning opportunities for all: The targets under SDG 4 include ensuring, by 2030, (i)
that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary
education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes, (ii) that all girls and boys
have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so
that they are ready for primary education, (iii) equal access for all women and men to
affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university,
(iv) that a larger percent the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including
technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship, and
(v) elimination of gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of
education and vocational training for the vulnerable, among others.

Nepal is committed to ensuring that all children have access to free, compulsory, and
good-quality basic and secondary education. Measures have subsequently been taken
to increase access to education, particularly for the poor and other disadvantaged groups.
As a result, NER in primary education has reached 96.6 percent in 2015. Similarly,
numeracy rate for all 15 years and above reached 62.2 percent and literacy rate of
population of age 15–24 years reached to 88.6 percent in 2015(Annex Table 4).

The ratio of students to teacher for basic education (up to 8 level) and secondary
education (up to 12 level) stands at 40. Almost half of the children have attended early
childhood education programme. In school level education, gender parity has been
achieved. However, disparity exists at tertiary level education (71 girls to 100 boys).Girls'
enrolment and completion of school education has improved significantly in the current
decade indicating to a sooner gender parity in higher education as well. The adult
female literacy rate for the population aged 15 and older has also increased drastically.

The proposed specific targets for SDG 4 include 99.5 percent net enrolment and
completion of primary education, and 99 percent gross enrollment in secondary education
by 2030. The other targets are: 95 percent of students enrolled in grade one to reach
grade eight; attendance in pre-primary education to reach percent of the children; the
proportion of youth and adults who have relevant skills(including technical and vocational
skillsfor employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship) to reach 75percent; all youth and

33
at least 95 percent of adults, both men and women to achieve literacy and numeracy;
elimination of gender disparities in tertiary education, and increasing the Human Assets
Index to 76 in 2030 from 67 in 2015(Annex Table 4).

SDG 5 - Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls: The targets
under SDG 5 include (i) ending all forms of discrimination against all women and girls
everywhere, (ii) eliminating all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public
and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation, (iii)
eliminating all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female
genital mutilation, (iv) recognizing and valuing unpaid care and domestic work, (v)
ensuring women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership
at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life, and (vi) ensuring
universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights.

Nepal has been able to some extent in narrowing the gender gap in important socio-
economic domains, notably in education, health services, employment opportunities, and
in participation in political decision-making process. Improvement has also been made in
eliminating practices that promote gender inequality and violence.Despite significant
progress made in ensuring wage equality for similar work, women’s average wage
consists only 62 percent of that of men’s. Furthermore the Gender Inequality Index and
Gender Empowerment Measurement stands at 0.5 and 0.568 (Annex Table 5).On gender
parity in labor force participation and political empowerment of women, Nepal moved
ahead, and stands on 110th position in global ranking for global gender gap in 2015. The
global gender gap report highlights that Nepal moved down to 94th from 88th on the health
and survival sub-index and 70th on the political empowerment sub-index.

The country is 16th on the labor force participation indicator, but this high score is offset
by a low participation of women as professional and technical workers and as legislators,
senior officials and managers. The ratio of women to men in professional and technical
workers is 0.24 (Annex Table 5). However, women's participation in cooperative sector is
encouraging. In comparison to government and political sphere, women’s participation in
decision-making is better in community levels organizations. More than 25 percent
representation of women is ensured in local peace committees, users’ groups, NGOs
private sector and community-based organizations. Although remarkable progress is
made towards participation of women in decision-making at different levels, some
sections of population, especially from poor, disadvantaged caste groups and indigenous
people have limited influence on the decisions that affect their lives.

Discrimination and violence against women and girls’ remain, despite significant and
continuous improvement. More than one fourth (26 percent) of women aged 15-49 year

34
experience physical or sexual violence. Among the different forms of violence, domestic
violence is predominant followed by girls trafficking, physical/sexual abuse, social abuses
and malpractices such as allegation of witchcraft, Chhaupadi (exclusion from family
during menstruation), dowry, early marriage (before the age of 18 years) etc.

The proposed specific targets for SDG 5 include elimination of wage discrimination at
similar work, elimination of physical/sexual violence, eliminating all harmful practices,
such as child, early and forced marriage and chhaupadi, increasing seats held by women
in the national parliament to 40 percent, and increasing women' share in public service
decision making positionsby nearly 4 fold to7.5 percent in 2030 from2.0percent of total
public service employees22. The Gender Inequality Index is targeted to decline to 0.05 in
2030 from 0.5 in 2015 while Gender Empowerment Measure is expected to rise to 0.70
by 2030 from 0.56 in 2015 (Annex Table 6).

SDG 6 - Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation

for all: The SDG 6 targets for 2030 include (i) achieving universal and equitable access
to safe and affordable drinking water for all, (ii) achieving access to adequate and
equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, (iii) improving water
quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous
chemicals and materials, (iv) substantially increasing water-use efficiency across all
sectors, (v) implementing integrated water resources management at all levels, and (vi)
protecting and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands,
rivers, aquifers and lakes.

Basic water supply coverage in the countryreached 87 percent of the population in 2015,
while sanitation also reached 70 percent of the population. However, less than half (49.5
percent) of the households have access to piped water supply (Annex Table 6). Access
to such supply varies across social groups and place of residence. Access to piped water
is positively associated with household wealth; almost all (99 percent) of households
having access to piped water are located within 30 minutes of the water source; and
access for them is uniform during both the rainy and dry seasons. Providing the safe
water through pipe is challenging, as recent survey indicated that 82.2 percent
households are using contaminated water with E. coli.

Although two-thirds (67.6 percent) of the Nepali population is using latrine, only 30
percent urban households are connected to sewer systems. Two-fifths (41 percent) of
local authorities (VDCs and Municipalities) have been declared open defecation free.
However, there is still a challenge to close the sanitation gap in southern flat land in order
to achieve universal access to basic sanitation.

22
The proportion of decision making level officials in civil service is about 9 per cent.

35
The proposed specific targets for the year 2030 in SDG 6 include basic water supply
coverage to 99 percent households and piped water supply and improved sanitation to
90 percent of households. Other targets are to free99 percent of the communities from
open defecation, to reach 95 percent of the households with improved sanitation facilities
which are not shared, and to enable 98 percent of the population to use latrine (Annex
Table 6).

SDG 7 - Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for
all:The SDG7 targets include achieving, by 2030, universal access to affordable, reliable
and modern energy services, increasing substantially the share of renewable energy in
the global energy mix and doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency.

Nearly three-fourth (74.7 percent) of households in the country are using solid fuels as
the primary source of energy for cooking, while one-fifth (18 percent) are using LPG for
cooking (Annex Table 7). Usage of LPG has increased rapidly during the last few years
not only in the urban households and commercial sector, but also in rural areas. However,
household's heavy reliance on traditional energy sources (solid fuels) seems unchanged.
While nearly three-fourth (74 percent) of the households have access to electricity in their
dwellings, the actual supply of electricity is far below the demand. In rural areas, electricity
supply from off-grid hydropower plants is limited and used mostly for lighting and
powering charging mobile phones and small equipment and appliances. Electricity from
solar PV home systems is growing but it is sufficient mostly for lighting only. Grid electricity
is unreliable with many hours of load shedding in the dry season. Households without
access to electricity depend on kerosene and LPG for lighting and cooking. Biogas is a
popular energy source for cooking and lighting, but its coverage is limited.

Under the above condition, ensuring access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy
for all is a daunting task. However, given the immense hydro power potential, private
sector coming up strongly in power generation, grid connectivity expanding and
alternative modern energy sources being capitalized, the country has the strength to meet
the targets. Thus the proposed specific targets for SDG 7 include accessibility of 99
percent households' to electricity, reduction to 10 percent -from nearly 75 percent now -
the households who resort to firewood for cooking, limiting the uses of LPG to less than
40 percent of the households, generation of at least 15000 thousand MW of electricity,
increase per capita electricity to 1500 kwh and decrease the commercial energy use per
unit of GDP from 3.20 ToE/mRs in 2015 to 3.14 ToE/mRsin 2030 (Annex Table 7).

SDG 8 - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and
productive employment and decent work for all: The targets under SDG 8 cover,

36
among others, (i) sustaining and achieving per capita economic growth with at least seven
percent GDP growth per annum in the LDCs, (ii) achieving higher levels of economic
productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, (iii) achieving
full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, (iv) improve
resource efficiency, (v) elimination of the worst forms of child labour, and (vi) expanding
financial services for all.

The average GDP growth for the last decade averaged at 4 percent only; growth is
vulnerable to agriculture which is mostly weather dependent. Material intensity23 of
manufacturing is high at 66 per cent. Underemployment is as high as 27.8 percent; and
nearly a quarter of those who are employed fall in the category of ‘working poor’. Besides,
labour market is predominantly informal with limited social security cover and gender
based wage discrimination; many children are still in domestic work; and 30 percent of
the children are working under hazardous condition (Annex Table 8).

The global target for 2030 is to achieve per capita GDP growth of 7 percent, and Nepal’s
target is also the same. This is necessary to achieve also for meaningfully graduating
from LDC status by 2022. The other targets are to maintain the growth of agriculture at
around 5 percentand that of construction to 15 percent throughout the SDG period;
reduce material intensity in manufacturing to 60 percent;lower underemployment to less
than 10 percent; and to eliminate the worst form of child labor. Alongside, the target is to
reduce the number of fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries by more than 3 quarters.
The target is also to increase annual number of jobs in tourism industries by tenfold and
to increase the direct contribution of tourism to GDP by four times (Annex Table 8).
Moreover, target for access to finance is set at 36 commercial bank branchesper 100
thousand population by 2030 from 18 in 2015. Similarly, 80 percent of the households are
targeted to have access to cooperatives within 30 minutes of walk.

SDG 9 - Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable

industrialization and foster innovation: The targets of SDG 9 cover (i) developing
quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and trans-
border infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, (ii)
promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialization, (iii) increasing the access of small-
scale industrial and other enterprises, (iv) upgrading the infrastructure and (v) enhancing
scientific research, and encouraging innovation.

Nepal faces severe infrastructure deficit. By the end of the FY 2015/16, some 29 thousand
km of strategic roads is in operation. Besides, 53 thousand km road built at the local

23
Material intensity refers to the value of material used in proportion to total value of output produced. Currently
Rs 66 equivalent of material input is used to achieve the output value of Rs 100.

37
levelis in operation. In total, near about 30 thousand km road is motorable of which only
12,000km is operable throughout the year. The existing road density (km/sq km) is very
low at less than 0.5 km/sq km, despite so much of priority being accorded to this sector.
Still two of the 75 districts and more than 400 VDCs (as per thestructure till 2016) of the
nearly 4000 ones are yet to be connected by road. Most of the road are not paved; such
road density stood at 0.01km/sq km in 2015. Almost none of the roads are safe from
international standard. Tele density has however gone up significantly with almost all of
the population connected in telecom services (Annex Table9).

The 2030 target is to increase road density to 1.5 km/sq km and paved road density to
0.25 km/sq km. The targets include connecting all the districts and Villages by road. At
least 50 percent of the road is targeted to be safe. Target for telephone is to cover all
population.

The proposed road specific targets for SDG 9 include construction of four lane road and
bridges at some sections, construction of Expressways, upgrading to the existing roads
to make it shorter through construction of via duct, tunnels, and bridges, optimization in
construction of longer and on higher levels to avoid longer length of roads to the bottom
hill for river crossing. Of the roads and bridges damaged by the earthquake, 350km roads
will have been reconstructed, the bridges repaired and maintained, an additional 2000km
roads will have been constructed, 654km roads will have been constructed in intermediate
and/or double lane, 3000km roads will have been upgraded, periodic maintenance work
of 1800km roads will have been done, regular maintenance of 3000km roads will have
been done, 300 more bridges will have been constructed, construction works of 500 new
bridges will have begun.

The industrial sector (manufacturing, water and electricity, and construction) suffers from
low investment and lack of competitiveness, particularly in manufacturing. Thus the share
of industry in total output remains just 15 percent and this sector employs just less than
7 percent of the labour force. The target for 2030 is to increase the share of industry to
25 percent so as to promote labour intensive activities and raising employment in
manufacturing to 13 percent of the total employment (Annex Table 9).

SDG 10 - Reduce inequality within and among countries: This goal includes targets
of progressively (i) achieving and sustaining income growth of the bottom 40 per cent of
the population at a rate higher than the national average, (ii) empowering and promoting
the social, economic and political inclusion of all, (iii) ensuring equal opportunity and
reduce inequalities of outcome, (iv) adopting policies, especially fiscal, wage and social
protection policies, and (v) progressively achieving greater equality. It also aims for
improving the regulation and monitoring of global financial markets and institutions and

38
strengthening the implementation of such regulations, and ensuring enhanced
representation and voice for developing countries in decision-making in global
international economic and financial institutions, and facilitating orderly, safe, regular and
responsible migration and mobility of people.

Inequality in Nepal is slightly more complicated as its measurement by Gini coefficient

does not capture all the inequality that really exists in society. The consumption inequality
(measured by Gini coefficient) is estimated at 0.33 in 2015while income inequality
(measured by Gini coefficient) is 0.4624. Out of total consumption, the share of bottom 40
percent population is only 18.7 percent (Annex Table 10). Similarly, the share of bottom
40 percent population in total income is nearly 12 percent. Despite this, the improvement
in the Gini coefficient from the level of 2004 (0.47) suggest that the growth in income
experienced by the bottom of the income groups has been faster than that of groups at
the top; and it is consistent with the bottom segments of the society “catching up” and
overall inequality declining. This transition is reflected in PALMA index, measured by
income of top 10 percent of population in proportion to that of the bottom 40 percent,
which remained at 1.3 between 2010 and 2015.

Poverty in Nepal is associated with empowerment of people. The social, economic and
political empowerments indexes developed in the past25 (UNDP, 2004) for Nepalstand at
0.41, 0.33 and 0.65 respectively. This indicates that Nepali population is more inclusive
and empowered in terms of political activities rather than social and economic activities.

Some other indicators of inequality include access to education and school completion,
health and nutrition condition, labour market conditions and wage rates, and social
protection coverage. In 2015, the proportion of the richest quintile of income group
completing primary education was 2.2 times the poorest quintile while children free of
stunting in the richest quintile was 1.6 times higher than the poorest quintile. The
proportion of population receiving social protection transfers stood at 18 percent in 2015
(Annex Table10).

Reduction in inequality is the outcome of several interventions under others goals which
have been discussed above. Based on that, the proposed specific targets for SDG 10 are
set to reducing consumption inequality (index) from 0.33 in 2015 to 0.16 in 2030 and
reducing income inequality from 0.46 to 0.23 at the same time period. The PALMA index
is targeted to improve from 1.3 to 1 in the same period. The targets also include increasing
the share of bottom 40 percent of the population to national income from 12 percent to 18
percent, increasing social, economic, and political empowerment indexes to 0.70 each,

24
Larger the Gini-coefficient, the larger the income inequality.
25
Nepal Human Development Report, 2004, UNDP and NPC, GoN, Kathmandu.

39
and increasing the ratio of nominal wage index to consumer price index from 2.9 to 3 in
the same period in order to protect the working class from deteriorating real wages. Also
the proposed target is to raise the proportion of population under social protection
coverage from 18 percent to 20 percent by 2030 (Annex Table10).

SDG 11 - Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and
sustainable: The targets under this goal include achieving by 2030 (i) access for all to
adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums, (ii) access
to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road
safety, notably by expanding public transport, (iii) inclusive and sustainable urbanization,
(iv) safeguarding the world’s cultural and natural heritage, (v) significantly reducing the
economic losses relative to GDP caused by disasters, including water-related disasters,
with a focus on protecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations, and (iv) provide
universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular
for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities.

Only 30 percent of the houses where people are living are considered to be safe house.
There is huge demand of building safe houses in urban areas. To fulfill the growing
housing demand in urban areas, private sector is emerging as an active player in the
urban housing. But housing facility is inadequate and proper housing is getting
unaffordable. About 7 percent of the households are living as squatters; nearly 46.7
percent of the households are having five and more persons within one house; cities are
unplanned and public transport is not very safe (Annex Table11).

The currently planned number of satellite cities is 10 which have not started construction
yet. The 2030 target is to construct 60 satellite cities. Currently, very limited number of
roads and public vehicles considered safe as per international criteria. Currently, 45
percent of municipalities have been provided with sewerage services. Almost all (98
percent) hospitals segregate wastes, while nearly one-tenth (9.4 percent) of the
households have underground drainage systems (Annex Table 11). This indicates that
there is still a challenge to connect every household into the underground drainage
system.

The catastrophic earthquake that struck Nepal on 25 April and 7 May 2015 made over
8,790 causalities and 22,300 injuries. It ruptured 756 thousand houses (499 thousand
fully damaged and 257 thousand partially damaged), 6,063 health facilities (4,904 fully
damaged and 1,159 partially damaged), and 1,711 other structures. Two thousand nine
hundred cultural and religious heritages at least a century old were either destroyed or
extensively damaged. Poorer rural areas have been more adversely affected than cities
due to their inferior quality of houses. For the earthquake victims, construction of safe
housing on government subsidies has begun.

40
As per the constitutional guarantee of the citizens' right to adequate housing, it is a must
to provide all the citizens a safe and affordable housing by effectively implementing the
National Housing Policy-2011. The 2030 target is to reduce the number of households
residing with more than five persons to 20 percent from 47 per cent in 2015. From almost
non-existent situation on safe road, the target is to make at least 50 percent of the
highways safe from global standard.

Besides, the proposed specific targets for 2030 include doubling the proportion of
households living in safe houses to 60 percent; substantially reducing air pollution,
preventing the deaths and injuries due to disaster, repairing and reconstructing, by
2020,all cultural heritages destroyed by earthquake, and increasing the budget allocation
to the protection of cultural heritage from about 1 percent in 2015 to 2 per cent by 2030
(Annex Table 11).

SDG 12 - Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns: This goal

targets for (i) implementing 10-year framework of programmes on sustainable
consumption and production, (ii) achieving, by 2030, sustainable management and
efficient use of natural resources, (iii) halving by 2030 per capita global food waste at the
retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses, (iii)achieving by 2020 the
environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life
cycle, (iv) substantially reducing, by 2030, the waste generation through prevention,
reduction, recycling and reuse, and (v) ensuring relevant information and awareness to
all for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature.

Nepal has abundant water resources and huge potential of generating hydropower, but
only 10 percent of such resources have been used. Given the low productivity in
agriculture, there is room for even doubling land productivity rather than expanding
cultivated land. Currently, 80 percent of the cultivated land has been used for cereal
production, and cultivated land is shrinking due to urbanization and other alternative uses
of land. Thus, practically the target for land to be available for cereal production is set at
75 percent of all cultivated land. Currently, consumption of wood per capita is 0.11 m3 per
year, and this is proposed tocontain at 0.05 m3 per year. Use of plastic per capita which
was 2.7 gram per day in 2015 is proposed to be almost zero. Similarly, the post-harvest
loss of food is targeted to reduce from 15 percent in 2015 to less than 1 percent by 2030
and to improve food loss index from 10 percent of (cereal) supply in 2015 to less than 2
percent by 2030 (Annex Table 12).

The other proposed specific targets for SDG 12 include limiting water uses to 20 percent
of the water resources, limiting fossil fuel consumption to 15 percent of energy
consumption, reducing liquid and solid industrial waste and eliminating of fossil fuel
subsidy.

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SDG 13 - Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts: The SDG
13 has the targets of (i) strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related
hazards and natural disasters in all countries, (ii) integrating climate change measures
into national policies, strategies and planning, and (iii) improving education, awareness-
raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation,
impact reduction and early warning, among others.

In Nepal, the total emission of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) per annum was only four megatons
and in per capita terms, it was 0.1 metric tons in 2009, which is negligible portion of the
global emission. In developed regions, average emission is about 11 metric tons of CO2
per person per year and in developing regions, it is about three metric tons, though wide
variations are found across regions. Nepal's consumption of ozone-depleting substances
was just 0.88 tons in 2004.

According to Green House Gas (GHG) Inventory, the agricultural sector is the largest
GHG emitter (68 percent). The transport and industrial sectors each emitted about 12
percent, while only five percent GHG was emitted by commercial sector (Annex Table
13).

A number of initiatives are taken to integrate mitigation and adaptation of the climate
change at the national and sub-national level. Nearly 80 percent of schools are covered
by climate change education, 791 trained persons (local planners) in climate change
adaptation have been prepared; and 31 community level and 4 village level adaptation
plans have been prepared.

The proposed specific targets for SDG 13 include making half the existing CO2 emission
level including from transportation, industrial, and commercial sectors. Consumption of
ozone depleting substance is targeted to reduce to one third of the existing level. Climate
change adaptation plan is proposed for 120 Village Councils and 750 communities by
2030. In the meantime, climate smart villages are proposed to increase from zero to 170
and climate smart farming to 500 units from zero at present. Almost all the schools will be
covered by climate change education and the number of trained persons (local planners)
for climate change planning would reach 3 thousand (Annex Table 13).

SDG 14 - Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for
sustainable development:

As, this goal is not relevant for Nepal, it is skipped from the analysis and target setting.

42
SDG 15 - Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems,
sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land
degradation and halt biodiversity loss: This goal targets for (i) ensuring, by 2020, the
conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater
ecosystems and their services, in particular forests, wetlands, mountains and dry lands,
in line with obligations under international agreements, (ii) promoting the implementation
of sustainable management of all types of forests, and (iii) halt deforestation. It also aims
at ensuring by 2030 the conservation of mountain ecosystems, including their biodiversity,
in order to enhance their capacity to provide benefits that are essential for sustainable
development.

Various programs are being implemented for the management of forest. Of the total
dense forest, communities manage 39 percent. In the context of conservation of bio-
diversity, 23.2 percent of total land area has been considered as conservation (protected)
area (including forest). Similarly, the country is also protecting 1,727 lakes, wetlands and
ponds. These areas are located in various ecological zones and have helped in the
conservation of incredible natural, biological and cultural heritage of those areas. More
than two-thirds (67.8 percent) of the mountain ecosystem has been covered by the
conservation area (Annex Table 15).

Twenty of the total 5,358 lakes found in Nepal are considered as dangerous lakes,
needing special protection. So far, 3346 watersheds have been conserved. Similarly,
1,675 kilometers of rivulets and riverbanks have been conserved through bio-engineering
process.

Degradation of natural habitats has threatened flora and fauna. Some species are moving
towards extinction at an ever-faster pace, with declines in both populations and
distribution. There are 12,480 plant and 11,706 animal species, of which 60 plant species
(0.48 percent) and 95 animal species (0.81 percent) are threatened. The Government
has put 17 plant (floral) species and 39 animal (faunal) species under conservation plan.

The 2030 target is to maintain conservation area at 23.3 of the total land area, increase
forest under community management from 39 percent to 42 per cent of the forest area,
halt forest loss and degradation, increase mountain ecosystem covered by the protected
area to 70 percent in 2030 from 68 percent in 2015, and undertake additional planation
of 5000 ha per annum (Annex Table 15).

SDG 16 - Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development,

provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive:This
goal is mainly accompanied by targets such as (i) significantly reducing all forms of

43
violence and related death rates everywhere, ending abuse, exploitation, trafficking and
all forms of violence against and torture of children, (ii) promoting the rule of law at the
national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all, (iii) reducing
illicit financial and arms flows, (iv) strengthen the recovery and return of stolen assets and
combat all forms of organized crime, (v) reducing corruption and bribery in all their forms,
and (vi) developing effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels.

Despite significant efforts to ensure good governance, Nepal still ranks relatively poor in
terms of overall transparency, accountability, integrity and rules of law situations – its
score being 3 (out of 6) against transparency, accountability and corruption in public. For
control of corruption, goodgovernance is needed, which has also been measured and
reported as minus 0.78 (the value fluctuates in between minus 2.5 to plus 2.5, and higher
value correspond to good governance). On quality of public administration, Nepal has a
score of 3.1 (out of 6) (Annex Table 16).

Children trafficking to abroad in 2015 as per official report was 64. But children of age 1-
14 years who experienced psychological aggression or physical punishment during the
last one month was alarmingly high at 81.7 percent in 2015. Direct death from armed and
violent conflict was 1628 in 2015 (Annex Table 16).

The proposed specific targets for SDG 16 include ending death from violent conflict,
violence against women, and violence against children, improve transparency and
accountability score from a scale of 3 at present to 5, and good governance scale from
(–) 0.78 to 2.0 in a scale of –2.5 to 2.5. The targets also include eliminating marriage
before the age of 18 years, 100 percent birth registration, 80 percent voter turnout in
elections, and access to justice for all(Annex Table 16).

SDG 17 - Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global

partnership for sustainable development: This goal has 19 targets which include (i)
strengthening domestic resource mobilization, (ii) full implementation of official
development assistance commitments by developed countries, (iii) mobilization of
additional financial resources for developing countries from multiple sources, (iv) adopting
and implementing Annex Table 17), (v) technology transfer to developing countries, (vi)
promoting rule based open, and equitable multilateral trading system, (vii) enhancing
policy coherence for sustainable development, and (viii) strengthening data, monitoring
and statistical capacity, among others.

This goal is for all the stakeholders to adhere to, ranging from resource mobilization and
capacity development and accountability to shared responsibility. The precedence of
realization to global commitment is not very encouraging, as several commitments in
trade, aid, investment and financing for developments of the LDCs have not been met in

44
significant scale. Besides, technology transfer has been an impeding matter for
productivity led economic growth and socio-economic transformation of a country like
Nepal.

Nepal has a relatively strong tax effort, as revenue collection stood at more than 19 per
cent of GDP in 2015. The targets for revenue collection for 2030 is set at 30 percent of
GDP. Domestic expenditure financed by domestic revenue is targeted to reach 80 per
cent from 76 percent in 2015. The target has been set modestly also for the reason that
scaling up public investment for addressing the infrastructure gap may require large
amount of external resources despite strong domestic revenue collection. For meeting
the private sector investment financing gap, foreign direct investment (inward stock) is
targeted to increase to 20 percent of GDP in 2030 from less than 3 percent in 2015.
Similarly volume of remittance is targeted to reach 35 percent of GDP to the maximum in
2030 from 29 percent in 2015 (Annex Table 17).

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Chapter IV: Issues and Challenges in SDGs Implementation

The SDGs are comprehensive, ambitious and challenging goals and require huge
resources as well as capacity enhancement to achieve them in 15 years' time. The goals
of universal access to basic economic and social services, reduction of inequality, and
structural changes in the production and consumption patterns are ideal. But their
achievements would require fundamental policy shifts, unprecedented national efforts
and larger international cooperation in action. The following sections delve on the key
issues and challenges that Nepal has to address to achieve the SDGs within the
stipulated time period.

4.1 Fully Integrating SDGs into Periodic Plans,Sector Strategies and Annual
Programmes

The implementation of MDGs has taught us lessons that mainstreaming the long term
goals and targets in national plans or poverty reduction strategies is so important for
formulating, prioritizing, and implementing interventions to meet such goals and ensuring
adequate resources for them. The country continues to formulate periodic plans and link
annual budgets and programs as per the periodic plans. The current 3 year periodic plan
has begun in July 2016 and it encompasses several programmes in line with the
SDGs.The challenge is to ensure that the SDGs as anchored in the plan are implemented
in an integrated way and all sector strategies and annual programs proposed by the line
ministries are in line with the SDGs.

The SDGs are not stand-alone goals, and achievement of one goal has implications to
the achievement of several other goals. For instance, achievement of poverty goal
depends on the accomplishment of so many others goals like on hunger, education,
health, or environment. The goal of gender empowerment will be achieved only through
mainstreaming gender in all the SDGs, their targets and indicators. Achieving
environment goal also requires corresponding environment related interventions in
several other goals like water and sanitation, sustainable production and consumption,
energy, or transport. As there is already an overlap among goals and targets, it is
necessary that goal specific and cross cutting interventions are properly specified,
implemented and monitored.

As several of the SDGs are capital intensive, they require a credible financing strategy
inclusive of the government, private sector, cooperatives, NGOs, and development
partners. The NPC will have to take a lead in continuously working with Line Ministries,
Provincial and Local governments, external development partners and other stakeholders
to implement and monitor the SDGs. This will ensure that SDGs related programs are

46
built into the government and non-government level programs, and that development
partners are on board to meet the SDGs financing gaps.

Once the SDGs are tailored in the periodic plans and annual budgets, there is a need for
annual budget audit from the SDGs perspectives. While developing a framework for such
an audit is critical, a designated agency for the task has to be put in place. For credibility
purpose, such agency could be outside the implementing agencies of the government. A
SDGs dashboard could be created to provide open source information on the state of
SDGs implementation and their progress. Besides, for effective monitoring the output and
outcome, the result framework of the Plan will have to be worked out with focus on SDGs.

4.2 Prioritization and Sequencing of SDG Targets and Their Indicators

Although SDGs are equally important, indivisible, and common for all countries, their
priorities are country specific, depending upon the level, gaps and structure of
development. This is very much true for Nepal where nearly a quarter of people are in
absolute poverty and deprivation. And, poverty cuts across several sectors and areas.
Thus, it is difficult to say any specific development activity as priority or non-priority in a
situation of serious development deficits. Priority, being a relative and not an absolute
term, implies that prioritization should be done in ranks such as priority one, priority two
and priority three. This kind of prioritization has already been exercised for the preparation
of Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF). Strengthening the same process would
be instrumental in setting priorities and allocating resources as per the degrees of priority.

SDGs having covered almost every sectors and becoming intertwined, there is no defined
way to prioritize them by goals or sectors. Prioritization can better be done within the
targets and indicators. This also implies that prioritization can be done at target level, at
indicator level, at project or program level, and even at activity level. This is different from
the normal planning process whereby sectors are prioritized but in the absence of proper
programming tools, they can hardly be translated into budget allocation and
implementation.

Prioritization will also be guided by financing and other resource availability and donor
support to specific SDGs. The global SDGs needs assessment and investment
requirements flagged thereon tell that huge financing gaps exist in SDGs implementation,
particularly in low income developing countries. Thus it can be presumed even before
detailed needs assessment and SDGs costing exercise that substantial financing gaps
persist in financing of the SDGs and donor support would be critical to meet the financing
gap. While donors would also, presumably, pledge their funding in SDGs area, they would
like to ensure that the government puts highest priority on those aided projects

47
irrespective of their actual priority status as per national norms. This has been already
observed during the implementation of MTEF whereby most donors wanted projects of
their support to be priority one! This is something that the government and donors have
to settle through agreeing on the prioritization criteria and adhering to the norms of
prioritization.

4.3 Localization of SDGs at the Sub-national Levels

Localization of SDGs at the sub national levels is strategically important for several
reasons. First, the federal system of government entrusts many SDGs related service
delivery at the province and local levels. They include basic and secondary education,
primary health care, water supply and sanitation, agriculture, basic infrastructure, and
social security. Second, devolution of revenue and other resource mobilization authority
to the Provincial and Local governments along with likely fiscal transfer of larger portion
of Federal revenue from the Federal government provide sub -national governments with
large amount of resources to carry out SDGs. Third, the level of development being
different across sub national units and the priorities of development being different,
prioritization and sequencing of SDG interventions could be best addressed through the
planning and budgeting process at the sub national levels. Fourth, local people’s
participation and effective service delivery can be best assured when the SDGs are
implemented at the sub national levels. And fifth, leaving no one behind andensuring
equality in development outcome requires targeting to the pockets of poverty, deprivation
and underdevelopment which only the local governments are more suitable to, and can
perform better.

The experience of MDGs implementation has shown that localization of national

development goals would be critical for properly addressing the targeted population, or
targeted group or a remote geographical area. The overall achievements of MDGs in
several areas have in fact masked the disparity in their achievements by gender, social
group or location. Addressing the hard-to-reach population, specific geographical areas
or marginalized and endangered indigenous people and tribe will require a localized
planning and programming approach, and thus a framework for implementing SDGs at
the sub-national and local levels would be essential.

Overall, as the localization of SDGs at the Provincial and Local governments’ levels is
critical for the universal, equitable and inclusive outcome of sustainable development
efforts, it is equally important to have a political set up at that level willing and capable of
handling the development agenda in an effective manner. Thus, along with preparing
SDGs based local development strategy at the sub-national and local levels, it is essential
to work out its financing strategy and encompass capacity development interventions in
the same strategy. The notion of 'capacity first and devolution later' should be denied with

48
devolution of the authority and capacity development agenda at the same time. No
excuses of capacity constraint should prevent the implementation of SDGs at the sub
national and local levels.

4.4Reaching Hard-to-Reach People and Up-scaling Interventions

Eradicating absolute poverty in next 15 years and making all kinds of poverty at least half
of the 2015 level calls for one percentage point reduction in existing poverty rate every
year which, given the past track record, would be attainable. However, as incidence of
poverty is much higher than the national average (some social/ethnic groups and
geographic regions facing almost double the national average of 21.6 percent), additional
efforts would be needed to bring them out of poverty within the given time frame. Besides,
increasing the share of bottom 20 percent in national income and consumption requires
more than average growth of that income group which again is contingent upon the
restructuring of the production and income generation process in favour of the working
class.

Despite good progress made in reducing malnutrition, over 30 percent children aged 6–
59 months are still underweight, while stunting (low height for age) and wasting (low
weight for height) for children of under five years of age are 37.4 percent and 11.3 percent
respectively. Ending stunting implies an annual reduction of 2.3 percentage points each
year. A combined approach of food supply and feeding to micronutrient supplementation
and control of diarrheal disease should be in place to attain this target. Similarly ending
the number of underweight children will also require a two percentage point reduction
every year from 31 percent in 2014 and ending stunting would require even more
expedited reduction. Reducing the proportion of land less farmers from 26 percent at
present to almost zero in 2030 requires two interventions: (i) increasing access to land
for such farmers and (ii) bringing excessive agricultural labour force out of farming
activities and engage in services and industry.Both of these are very challenging tasks
and require unconventional interventions either to make productive resources including
land available for the landless and marginal farmers or to take them out to other business.

The health sector challenges are more pronounced in reducing maternal mortality to less
than 70 per hundred thousand live births from 258 in 2015, reducing preventable child
mortality rate from 38 per thousand live births to less than 22, reducing neonatal mortality
to less than 10and ensuring universal reproductive health care services for tackling
various dimensions of reproductive morbidities.This is even more challenging when there
are serious social/ethnic and geographical disparities in the present national level data
on mortality.

49
In education, reaching all students enrolled in grade one to grade eight would be a
challenge, as till now only 75 percent of the students enrolled in grade one reach grade
eight. Also enrolling all children to early childhood education or preschool from the current
level of 51 percent also calls for substantial additional efforts. Raising female adult
numeracy from 52 percent at present to 95 percent while the same for male from 75
percent to 95 percent would be achievable.

The achievement of gender equality and empowering women would be one of the major
challenges for the reason that it requires social re-architecture along with economic
interventions. Eliminating violence against girls and women which some reports put it as
high as a quarter of their total population (MoH, 2011), raising women's participation in
the public decision making places like the parliament and the corporate offices which
currently stands at less than one third would be a difficult task.

Containing inequality through market based policy instruments would be a formidable

task; and unless pro poor growth policies and interventions along with strong distributive
measures are put in place, it is hard to increase the share of bottom 40 percent in national
income. Currently, the bottom 40 percent of the population holds only 12 percent of the
national income and it has to be raised at least by 50 percent to 18 percent of total income
if some tangible achievement is to be made in this area.

Nepal is rapidly urbanizing with current urban population growth at 3.4 percent per annum
remaining nearly three folds the national population growth. Besides, the government has
been announcing new municipalities in a large number. So, urban infrastructure to newly
announced municipalities would have to start from almost zero. Besides, the human
settlement damaged by the recent earthquake has to be rebuilt. Currently only more than
a quarter of the households live in cement bonded houses and only less than 10 percent
households have underground drainage connection. Making this service universal or at
least doubling the service requires a lot of resources which local community may not be
able to finance. So national and international financing in urban development is getting
more prominent.

The goal and targets on reducing violence, ending abuse, exploitation, trafficking and
other forms of violence against children, improving transparency and accountability in
public administration, or deepening democracy would be most challenging particularly
against a weak base and at a time of prolonged political transition.

50
4.5 Mobilizing Financial Resources and Meeting the Financing Gap

As the SDGs encompass diverse set of outputs and activities, they can be financed by
multiple sources. The government can finance them through public investment
programme at all its levels. Households, who can afford, can finance them in the form of
out-of-pocket expenses. The non-government organizations, cooperatives and
community sectors can finance some of the SDGs through resource mobilization at the
community level. The private sector can mobilize equity and debt from the domestic
market as well as through Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for financing the SDGs which
could be implemented in business model. The INGOs, philanthropic organizations, charity
foundations, and personal trusts can also be instrumental in supporting the SDGs
financing.

The SDGs financing strategy itself, has serious implications for the outreach of the people
to the goods and services and the sustainability of such outreach. Particularly the taxation
system has serious implication for inclusion/exclusion of the poor from their access to
basic goods and services. Evidence is strong that direct and indirect user fees for primary
education and essential healthcare are a barrier to access for the poor. But ending user
fees often requires increased aid to make up for the government revenue shortfall. Thus
incentive effects of well-designed user fees must be compatible with policy objectives (i.e.
no health and primary education fees). As such, household contributions must be
estimated on the basis of ability to pay across all sectors. Thus for household financing,
user fees from poor households should not be expected to contribute to the cost of basic
social and environmental services and basic transport infrastructure. But for richer
households, they can be expected to contribute through out of pocket expenses to finance
some social and environmental services to be rendered within SDG framework.

4.6 Capacity Development at the Federal and Local Government Levels

The SDG 17 has clearly mentioned about enhancing international support for
implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to support
national plans to implement all the sustainable development goals, including through
North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation. But international support must be
led and reinforced by the national government so that capacity constraints do not impede
the achievement of SDGs despite commitments, resource availability and willingness to
carry forward the agenda. The SDGs national development strategy formulation and
implementation will thus encompass capacity development as its integral part. The SDGs
needs assessment should undertake capacity assessment as one of its activities and the
interventions identified to implement SDGs must also include capacity development
interventions so that they also get adequate budgetary resources. Unless capacity

51
development interventions are mainstreamed into the national planning and budgeting
process, they will not get enough priorities and resources for expedited implementation.

The capacity assessment exercise undertaken in the context of MDGs implementation

provides a lot of tools, knowledge and experience within the UN system and they could
be adapted for SDGs related capacity assessment as well. The global community can
quickly work on it and support the government to undertake the capacity assessment
based on a credible framework and then support to address the capacity gaps. In
particular, the institutional, physical, instrumental, information technology related, and
human resource related capacity gaps will have to be addressed as the most prioritized
interventions and be solved the problem before it becomes too late for the full
achievement of SDG related outputs.

4.7 Post Disaster Recovery, Resilience, and Climate Change

Nepal is prone to disasters by its very topography, location, and habitat. The disaster risks
are often reflected in big earthquakes, floods, landslides, avalanches, fires, and outbreak
of diseases. These disasters have often undermined the achievements made in poverty
reduction and human development and posed serious challenges to human security.
Achievement of SDGs with better human development outcomes implies that there are
adequate disaster risk reduction interventions identified during SDGs needs assessment
and drawing their financing strategies.

The SDGs are themselves designed to reduce several of the risks and vulnerabilities, and
interventions implemented to achieve them would somehow take care of the disaster risks
and vulnerabilities. But still there are some disasters which are difficult to predict and plan
accordingly -one of them being earthquake as Nepal experienced in the recent past. The
disaster has taken life of nearly nine thousand people, completely destroyed more than
half a million houses and damaged more than 200 thousand houses and public offices.
The damage and loss of the earthquake as measured by the Post Disaster Needs
Assessment (NPC, 2015) is more than Rs. 700 billion and the reconstruction cost would
be as much as Rs. 670 billion. This is indicative of the fact that the country must make
contingency planning for unpredictable disasters, which demand additional financial and
human resources. The SDGs implementation will have to be formulated in such a way
that addressing such kinds of disasters do not derail or obstruct the process of
implementing SDGs related interventions. So, SDGs financing strategy, capacity
assessment for implementing them and implementation strategy itself will have to be
mindful of likely disasters in future and necessary actions to be taken up to smoothly
handle them without disrupting the normal SDGs implementation mechanism.

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4.8 Strengthening Governance and Service Delivery

Good governance, which is synonymous with democratic governance, is possible when

democratic values and norms are engraved into the functioning of the state, the society
and its institutions. Free, fair, and inclusive elections to choose people's representatives,
peaceful turnover of power, accountable government and responsible opposition, rule of
law, respect for human rights, accountable and transparent public administration,
separation of powers and an impartial judiciary, decentralized local governance, a strong
civil society, free press, effective service delivery and inclusiveness in social, economic
and political processes are the key dimensions of good governance. These features of
good governance, including the ones enshrined in the SDGs cannot be ensured without
the accompanying values of human rights, equality and equity, inclusion, solidarity,
plurality, and respect for the people and environment they live (UN, 2007).

On the whole, there are many reasons as to why economic development continues to
bypass many of the poorest people and places and one common cause for this is poor
governance. When governance is characterized by lack of transparency, accountability
or competence, the poor and vulnerable people suffer the most. When income inequality
is high, economic growth does not sufficiently help to reduce poverty. When state policies
and programs are frequently captured by the ruling elite, which expropriate most of the
resources, the poor do not have an access to resources and opportunities as well as
“voice” and are thus remain excluded from the development process. This is what the
SDGs have shown much of the concern; and without sound governance the country
cannot expect to make sustained progress in human development and poverty reduction.

In a post conflict situation, commissions for disappeared persons, transitional justice, and
truth and reconciliation will have to be in place to resolve the cases of conflict period and
to establish lasting peace. These institutions are yet to be fully in operation even after a
decade of peace agreement with the rebels. The structures destroyed during the conflict
period are not yet reconstructed and the recent earthquake has even added
reconstruction task of the government. The National Reconstruction Authority has yet to
be fully functional. The reconstruction task also requires a strong local and community
level mechanism which has not taken place in the wake of almost non-existent local
government and failure of alternative implementation coordination mechanism set as ad
hoc arrangement. The recent election for the Local Government is an encouraging
development, but the elected representatives will require an enabling act and functional
organization structure to make service delivery better than in the past.

53
4.9 Strengthening Data, Monitoring and Evaluation system

Strong monitoring system with credible data base is crucial to thesuccess of SDGs. Only
an effective government with a strong statistical systems can measure and incentivize
progress across the goals. Global studies reveal that a total of US$1 billion per annum
will be required to enable 77 of the world’s lower-income countries to catch-up and put in
place statistical systems capable of supporting and measuring the SDGs26. While donors
must maintain current contributions to statistics, recipient countries must commit to fill the
gap, mobilizing domestic resources behind clear national strategies for the development
of statistics (NSDSs). For Nepal, this implies restructuring the Central Bureau of Statistics
(CBS) to enable it to generate and process a large number of data required for SDGs
monitoring. Besides, data quality control and standardization from one institution is also
necessary for the reason that monitoring of SDGs indicators requires not only a large
number of data but also standard and quality data along with their regular availability.

The major data challenges pertain to disaggregation (by sex, age, ethnicity, disability,
location, administrative units of the state, and income or wealth), standardization
(definition, unit of measurement, method of computation, and open source. There are
about 425 indicators to monitor the 169 targets, but data for not more than 250 Indicators
are regularly or intermittentlyavailable. Data for some other 50 indicators are partially
available and that for more than 100 indicators are not availableat all27. Besides, there
are many qualitative information to be collected -such as perceptions of citizens on public
services, corruptions and wellbeing. Some of the data are globally published and there is
no country ownership of the same. There is also huge difference between government
recorded data and those compiled by non-government organizations. This is particularly
the case with violence, crime, human trafficking, violation of human rights, etc.

The existing statistical system is marred with various problems. First, data sources are
spread over multiple windows; and other than census and economic surveys, social and
governance related surveys are outside the purview of CBS. Second, credibility of data
come under question for the reason of sample size, computation process or insufficient
metadata. Third, there is data revolution taking place due to technological changes,
evolution of big data28 and growing trend of open data29 system. The unprecedented rate
of innovation in data collection techniques and technologies and the capacity to distribute

26
Data for development- A Needs Assessment for SDGs Monitoring and Statistical Capacity Development;
Sustainable Development Solution Network, 2015.
27
The proper mapping of the data and their strength will be done in the second part of the SDG Report.
28
Big data pertains to ongoing accumulation of massive, often complex and always changing data set.
29
Open data pertain to public data from state, local, federal governments, business reporting, government
data on weather, census, gps, healthcare, education, social security etc, and large data from scientific
research, social media, or other non-governmental sources.

54
data widely and freely has expanded the horizon of possibility. The current statistical
system in Nepal is, however, yet to evolve that way. Particularly, access to public and
even private sector data becomes a big challenge for independent monitoring agencies
outside the government. Fourth, comparability of data is a problem for inconsistencies of
the surveys, purpose of the surveys, and lack of transparency in data collection –both
primary and secondary. Finally, census and surveys are financed by donors and often the
timely work on census and surveys faces problem due to delays in aid mobilization. The
government will have to make necessary legal, organizational and operational changes
in the existing data system in order to generate and share the large, high quality and
timely data for monitoring the progress of the SDGs.

UN has suggested SDGs indicators to be disaggregated, where relevant, by income, sex,

age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability and geographic location and SDNS is
working towards meeting in the data gaps – both at the aggregate and disaggregated
levels. Nepal requires both external funding and capacity building to ensure that the
proposed monitoring indicators have data in them. Besides, strengthening data system
becomes a priority of the government as well.

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Chapter V: Conclusion and Way Forward for Achieving the SDGs

5.1 Conclusion

The SDGs are consistent with the fundamental rights of the citizens enshrined in the
Constitution of Nepal 2015 and in line with the country’s medium term roadmap to
graduate from LDC status and long term vision of transforming to a prosperous nation
with equity and social justice. The country ownership of the SDGs is manifested in the
institutional set up with no other than the Prime Minister himself heading the Steering
Committee for their implementation and current 14th Plan as well as annual budgets being
aligned with the SDGs.

The ambitious SDGs require state and non-state actors’ ownership and commitment with
substantially up-scaled resources and capacity to implement them at both the national
and international levels. There were several issues in MDGs implementation such as
limited resources, lack of coordination among development partners to help streamline
MDGs into poverty reduction strategy papers or national development strategies, and
belated country response to own MDGs and implement them through the national
planning and budgeting process. Lack of country capacity to translate MDGs into national
programs and insufficient resources to finance them were also the reasons behind weaker
implementation of the MDGs. While SDGs are already on board, their
implementationshould not repeat the past weaknesses.

Nepal has made a robust progress in reducing absolute poverty despite far from favorable
political and economic climate. Yet, while aiming at ending absolute poverty (of
international definition) in Nepal by 2030, significant challenges come to the fore,
particularly with the reversal of poverty outcomes after the recent earthquake. Thus the
major concern is how to consolidate the gains in poverty reduction, make them
sustainable and shift the policy discourse gradually from that of absolute poverty to that
of prosperity in general. Equally concerning is the sustainability of the de facto migration-
remittance based development model in terms of generating growth for the economy as
well as for those people who constitute the bottom 40 percent. Since economic growth
and employment are the key to poverty reduction and empowerment of people, necessary
conditions for meeting SDG 1 is faster growth of the economy along with generating
enough jobs to absorb half a million labour force entering into labour market every year.

Equally important would be redoubling our efforts to reach the excluded and hardest to
reach people who remain in chronic poverty and enhance their abilities to contribute to
and participate in economic growth. As many of them are already in external labour

56
market, the challenge is how to reintegrate them in the domestic market. Migration of low
skilled workers is likely to continue into the medium term, but the extent to which
successive cohorts of migrants can move up the skill ladder depends critically on how the
investment in key skills and human capital plays out. The demand side of the migrant
workers will be equally important in sustaining the remittance inflows from abroad which
have been so instrumental in poverty reduction.

Achieving the goal in agriculture will be instrumental to achieve several other goals
including absolute poverty, education, health, environment, and inequality. As a large
portion of the Nepalese population will still resort to agriculture for the livelihood, income
and employment, prioritized resource allocation, creation of rural infrastructure, and use
of science, technology and innovation in agriculture will help achieve several other goals
along with SDG 2. Coordination among line agencies like irrigation and agriculture
extension and agricultural research will be highly important.Thus it is essential that
government as well as the development partners duly emphasize resource allocation to
agriculture for a country like Nepal where agriculture is not only a source of food security,
jobs, and poverty reduction but also a means of socio-economic transformation.

Meeting quantitative targets under MDGs should not make policy makers complacent, as
the country has to go a long way to ensure healthy life for all the citizens. No substantial
and sustainable improvements in the health of Nepalese people can be realized unless
three issues - coverage, care, and quality human resource/supplies - are dealt with.
Achieving sustainable development in health sector is challenging and good governance
at the national as well as local levels is essential for sustained and inclusive health gain,
and sustainable health development.

The quantitative progress made so far in education is no doubt encouraging. Now the
challenge is twofold: increasing the quality education and linking education and skill with
economic activities and work. Ensuring and properly measuring the quality aspects of
educational outcomes is not an easy task. Efforts have been made to define
competencies in school education but the same for ECED is not clear yet. Besides,
considering the current education pattern with low proportion of technical and vocational
education and high proportion of general education, liking educated youth to work and
employment under existing social, economic, and political situation is a challenging task.

Gender inequality is one of the major impediments of progress towards economic

prosperity, peace and harmony, social integration and sustainable development.
Therefore, gender equality need to be addressed not only as a standalone goal, but also
to be mainstreamed in all other goals with specific inclusive indicators and targets with
resources. Achieving gender equality is contingent on how the country can transform the

57
whole society, economy and polity rather than just by making legal provisions without its
meaningful enforcement.

Nepal missed the 2017 national target for universal coverage of basic water supply and
sanitation as more than 15 percent of the population is still out of even the infrastructure
created for water supply. Besides,only about half of all water supply schemes are fully
functional at any one time. Rapid urbanization is putting more pressure to it. Sanitation is
still mostly linked to creating ODF society without strong infrastructure base. The
challenge will be to maintain the momentum and generate a post-ODF movement that
will help households to climb the sanitation ladder.

Putting modern energy as a separate goal in SDGs addresses the limitations of MDGs
not being able to directly address such an important intervention to achieve several other
SDGs. Nepal, despite having huge potential for renewable energy, particularly the
hydropower, is currently facing energy shortfall. Nepal agrees with the SE4ALL proposal
that the focus for energy access needs to go to a multi-tier framework that better captures
the quantity and quality of electricity supplied, as well as the efficiency, safety and
convenience of household cook stoves, including those that make use of biomass.

Evidence has shown that a sustained, inclusive and high economic growth can reduce
poverty faster. Making the economic growth process inclusive also implies that productive
forces including the labour are engaged in the production process. The challenge then is
to ensure both inclusion and efficiency in the growth process. Besides, Nepal has a large
informal labour market with low wages and no social security coverage. Migrant workers
are releasing most of the pressure in the labour market condition. Creating enough jobs
within the country, enforcement of minimum wages and formalization of labour market
are critical for ensuring decent jobs.

Nepal requires huge investment in infrastructure development to create a minimum

condition for industrial investment. Given that public resources are overstressed in
meeting social and economic sector interventions, it is crucial that donor resources and
foreign direct investments are channeled towards these areas to unlock the infrastructure
bottleneck for industrialization and economic growth. Currently, investment in innovation
is very low at both the public and private sectors resulting in low factor productivity.
Sustained production pattern would mean that productivity drives the output growth rather
than just factor accumulation.

As elsewhere, income inequality has reduced the impact of economic growth on poverty
reduction in Nepal also. Such inequality is built in the disparity in ownership of productive
assets like land, capital and technology, level of education and skill, and in remoteness

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of human settlements. For progressively achieving and sustaining income growth of the
bottom 40 per cent of the population at a rate higher than the national average,
interventions have to focus on those very population and areas along with following
progressive taxation and subsidy policies. Besides, existing macroeconomic policies
require to be reoriented to make them reduce inequality rather than widen it.

The growing pace of urbanization and increasing number of urban population has posed
serious pressure on utility services like water and sanitation facilities, transportation
services, housing and public places, protected resources like public places and heritages,
and urban security system. However, urban planning, budgeting, and resource allocation
has drawn lesser attention of both the national government and donors. Housing in the
form of shelter is growingly taken as government responsibility in a welfare state.

Sustainable consumption and production is more an issue with advanced economies

where the uses of water, air, fossil fuels, goods made of non-renewable natural resources,
use of plastics, and wastage of foods, among others have been excessive. Developing
countries like Nepal are consuming only a small fraction of such resources and goods.
Thus getting substantive result in this target largely depends on how developed countries
will implement their commitments and support to developing countries, taking into account
the development and capabilities, in implementing the ideal target.

Achieving sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources will largely
depend on how we can reduce the excessive dependence of the government and the
people on such resources for their incomes and livelihoods. Nepal's land and forest based
livelihood, incidence of poverty and its pressure on natural resources and environment,
and the quest for development have been key challenges for sustainable and efficient
use of natural resources. Addressing this will require sustainable poverty reduction
strategy and transformation of the economic and livelihood process.

Nepal, despite being non-contributing to the factors making climate change, has already
started suffering in agriculture, livelihood, disease control, watershed management, and
environment protection from climate changes taking place. The country would be ready
to cooperate, at both the regional and global levels, in strengthening resilience and
adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters. But the country would
definitely require global development support through climate change financing or carbon
financing mechanisms to contribute for the 'global good'.

Forest is not only an asset for environmental protection but also has huge potentials for
job creation, income generation and tourism promotion. As several other LDCs and
developing countries, Nepal also has not utilized full potentials of forest resources.

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Therefore, forestry in SDGs should be considered as a productive sector enabling
creation of employment, enterprises and growth. These need to be reflected in the goals
and targets.

Inclusion of peace, justice, and responsible institutions in SDGs agenda is a welcome

step forward in recognizing the importance of peace, avoidance of conflict and prevention
of violence to the development agenda of poverty alleviation. However, the goal,
especially the components of good governance, rule of law and access to justice is quite
vague. The country needs to prioritize particular indicators in the agenda as appropriate
to the context, some of the key words that need to be reflected in the indicators for Nepal
include transparency, accountability, zero tolerance to corruption, end of impunity,
effectiveness of oversight agencies, right to information and proactive disclosure,
decentralization and inclusive representation and participation in decision making from all
sections of society.

The SDGs being shared responsibility, both the national government and international
development partners have to be on board and should be working together to address
the resource, governance, and capacity gaps at the country level. But if the experience
of MDGs were any indication, it would be extremely difficult to bring all the global
development actors on one platform. Even the UN one window strategy requires further
efforts to see that all UN agencies are coordinated and synergized towards strong country
support to implement the SDGs. Even if all development agencies work closely at the
corporate level, coordination at the country level would be more challenging; and unless
a proper mechanism is put in place to ensure that the development compact is fully owned
and exercised at the national level, the government would find it difficult to coordinate and
mobilize external development partners.

5.2 Way Forward to achieve the SDGs

5.3.1 Macroeconomic policy reforms

Poverty, unemployment and inequality are rooted not only in the sectoral public policies
but also, or even more, on the macroeconomic policies underlying the output, price, trade,
investment, and income distribution pattern. Eradicating poverty requires commencing
two-pronged strategy –putting credible macroeconomic policies in place for higher
economic growth and affecting distribution of income through policy interventions in the
labour market along with expanding social protection. Unlocking the economic growth
potential requires that enabling fiscal, monetary, external trade, investment and labour
market policies are in place, and are providing environment for private investment –
domestic and foreign.

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Economic growth will be inclusive when most citizens can participate in the production
process, share the benefits, are covered by social protection in case of not being able to
participate in the production and benefit sharing process. For inclusive growth process,
while macroeconomic policies will have to be pro-poor, labour intensive sectors will have
to be promoted by state interventions which may not be compatible with the norms of free
market economy.

Domestic financial market condition, taxation system, and trade and foreign exchange
regulations would be critical for promoting domestic as well as foreign direct
investmenthighly essential to harness infrastructure that drives the growth process. A
stable macroeconomic condition with credible and predictable fiscal as well as financial
policies would be thus necessary to meet the huge financing gap foreseen in SDGs
implementation.

5.2.2 Undertaking SDGs needs assessment and their financing requirement

The SDGs are very much resource intensive and developing countries like Nepal can
face large funding, financing, technological and implementation capacity gaps. Such gaps
have to be measured in concrete terms with proper needs assessment tools so that
funding and raising implementation capacity could be objectively worked out.Pledging
international aid for the SDGs also requires that the funding gap is credibly worked out.
The government will have to identify the interventions needed for achieving the targets
and their indicators and assess the constraints in their implementation. The key sectors
whose needs assessment would be critically important are the infrastructure and
economic services which were not seriously costed during MDGs era.

The needs assessment and costing of the SDG targets and their indicators requires
fixation of defined output for 2030, their quality or standard, and the cost per unit of the
output. Some of the interventions may not necessarily require financing, neither costing
tools necessarily apply to them; they relate to inequality, sustainable production and
consumption and governance. They could be addressed through policy shifts or policy
changes. Besides, administrative reforms can also deliver some of the SDGs. A detailed
needs assessment can only tell what exactly are to be in place. This would also help to
map resources against SDG needs and then prioritize the targets and interventions for
implementation.

5.2.3 Drawing SDGs financing strategies and meeting the financing gaps

The SDGs will have to be funded from multiple sources including the government revenue
and other domestic finance, external official development assistance, and other

61
international supports. The availability of external financing should in no way substitute
the efforts for domestic resource mobilization as it has been the case in the past. A
sustainable financing for the SDGs can build on the national strength to mobilize
government, non-government, private and household level resources.

Domestic resources mobilization

The primary responsibility to achieve the SDGs falls on the government; and the role of
development partners is only second to that of the national government. Exercising this
responsibility requires scaling up investment along with capacity development to do so.
A large portion of such investment requirement has to be financed with domestic
resources and that has to be sustainable. Of the two major sources of domestic resource
mobilization for the government, i.e. taxation and domestic borrowing, efforts to mobilize
either of them in a scaled up manner has serious macroeconomic implications. Raising
more revenue from tax or non-tax measures has differentiated implications. For instance,
resorting more to indirect taxation and widening tax base or rate for the same ends up
with higher tax incidence to the poor people from the very nature of the tax itself. If some
SDG related targets are to be met with the provision of universally accessible and
affordable goods and services, it is necessary that the tax or fee system does not obstruct
the effort. Similarly, excessive resort to domestic borrowing might have crowd out effect
which undermines the likely private sector investment required in the SDG area.

Nepal's current revenue efforts are satisfactory as revenue to GDP ratio has stood at
more than 20 percent in FY 2015/16. There is not much space to raise more revenue
without sufficiently raising the tax base that is the GDP itself. Further, as indirect taxes
are by their very nature regressive and widening such tax base to cover basic goods and
services would exclude the poor from accessing them, there is not much scope to widen
the base without affecting the affordability of the poor to such goods and services. Similar
is the case with fees and charges. Due care needs to be given to ensure that the poor
people's access to utilities and services are not compromised by the fee and charge
structure.

The Constitution has devolved several revenue sources to the Provincial and Local
governments. They include land and property registration tax, vehicle tax, land tax, and
business tax. Some of the revenue sources are also under concurrent authority of the
Federal, Provincial and Local governments. There is skepticism over aggressive
mobilization of tax revenue at the Provincial and Local government Levels for the reason
that (i) they might take long time to evolve and strengthen revenue administration and (ii)
they would be preferring to more fiscal transfers from Federal government than collecting

62
more revenue. Besides, the concurrent authority of revenue mobilization requires that
proper mechanism

The private sector is naturally a profit seeking entity and it is not rational to expect the
private sector to be inclusive or concerned to affordability of the poor. But this sector has
crucial role in promoting economic growth through industry and services, generating jobs
in agriculture, tourism and construction among others, and ensuring decent work. It can
also contribute to urban development, housing and transportation services. It enables the
government to upscale SDGs investment through contribution to the revenue basket of
the government. Besides, the corporate social responsibilities of the private sector, and
their role in social security or social protection, make a great contribution to achieving
SDGs. But it can only do so when a proper legal, regulatory, and operational framework
is in place. The tax and subsidy regime and governance system would be critical for
private sector role in mobilizing more resources.

The cooperatives sector is emerging as the third important actor of development in the
country. Although they provide member based services, the growing number of their
member indicates that cooperative initiative highly complements to government and
private sector initiatives for SDGs achievement. Particularly, their social business and
concern for the members and community as a whole can be used as complementary to
public and private sector initiatives. However, their contribution to financing SDGs would
very much depend on how the Cooperative Act and associated regulations are
formulated, implemented, and monitored.

External resources: foreign aid commitments, aid coordination and effectiveness

As LDC with severe resource and capacity constraints for carrying forward the SDGs, it
is logical for Nepal to expect external cooperation through trade, investment and
development assistance in the country's development efforts. The Millennium Declaration
had amply recognized the situation and had made a call to develop further an open, rule-
based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system, to address the
special needs of the LDCs including tariff and quota free access for LDCs’ exports;
enhanced programme of debt relief for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) and
cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous ODA for countries committed to
poverty reduction. The Declaration also called for a comprehensive deal on the debt
problems of developing countries through national and international efforts and making
available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications
with the involvement of the private sector also.

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The global community also committed Net ODA at 0.7 percent of OECD/DAC donors’
gross national product for developing countries and 0.15 percent for LDCs. There was a
call for a large proportion of ODA to basic social services like basic education, primary
health care, nutrition, safe water and sanitation and most of it being expected to be untied.
However, as the latest data show, there has been significant shortfall of actual ODA from
the commitments made. There are global commitments made towards supporting the
developing countries in aid, trade, investment, technology transfer, and capacity
development. However, financing for SDGs has not come up in concrete shape. In this
context, while more ODA would have to be committed by the OECD/DAC countries and
more concessional assistance to be offered by the multilateral financial institutions, it is
equally important that aid utilization capacity enhancement measures be taken at both
national and international levels.

Nepal does not face debt sustainability problem at the moment as its external and
domestic debts accounted for only 16.7 percent and 10.3 percent respectively of the
country's GDP in 2016. As such total debt of the government declined from more than 60
percent of the GDP in 1995 to 53.3 percent in 2005 and further to 27 percent in 2016.
This was partly because of the underperformance of the government in development plan
and budget implementation. The government remained in net budget surplus for the last
several years as the actual budget expenditure was far below the estimated expenditure.
The saving in the fiscal account thus not only prevented the government from additional
domestic borrowing but also enabled the government to repay some of its long term as
well as short-term loans. Besides, the underutilization of foreign loan due to poor project
implementation following the frequent changes of the government and lack of public
accountability for aid realization also led to slow accumulation of public foreign debt in
some of the years, amount spent on debt servicing has been more than the loan mobilized
for development activities.

Learning from the past, the external financing of the SDGs must take into account the
following measures. First, global aid commitment should be an integral part of SDGs
implementation strategy. Bilateral and multilateral aid agencies will have to scale up their
resources to fund the SDGs financing gap. Second, aid will have to be untied and will
have to be made fungible enough to finance the programs of national priority. The
priorities will of course have to be guided by the SDGs and their targets. Third, aid will
have to be channeled through the national budget and any sub-national level aid will have
to be tailored to local priorities and programs. Funding to be made through NGOs will
have to be coordinated with Federal and Local governments. Fourth, aid coordination
among development partners will be critical for its effectiveness. UN country support
requires to be extended as ONE UN in practical terms. Existing Sector Wide Approach
could be extended to capture more of the SDGs areas so that aid coordination is better

64
observed in implementation. Fifth, as low exports and loss of competitiveness therein has
been a concern for external sector balance and foreign exchange availability for financing
imports essential for the implementation of SDGs, it is equally important that aid for trade
is scaled up and effectively implemented. Finally, aid in grant will have to be mobilized for
the country's capacity development at both the national and sub-national levels and in the
areas where only social rate of return is immediately visible and economic rate of return
is unpredictable. Several SDGs fall in this category.

5.2.4 Prioritizing SDGs and sequencing them

Obviously SDG priorities have to be set against fiscal, financial, managerial, institutional
and other capacity constraints. But they should not be rigidly bound by the constraints;
and, efforts must be made to unlock the binding resource and other capacity
constraints.The prioritization of policies, programmes, or activities criteria could be based
on (i) direct impact on the achievement of particular SDG, (ii) indirect impact on the
achievement of other SDGs, (iii) contribution to gender, social and geographicalinclusion,
(iv) level of people’s participation and ownership, (v) cost effectiveness and sustainability,
etc. In essence, prioritization of projects and programs should be based, along with direct
or indirect contribution to the achievement of any SDGs, on synergy that they can bring
in the development process, having larger social impact along with economic.Despite that
priorities can be situation, time and location specific and depend upon the level of
economic development and social structure, some common prioritization criteria could be
developed based on development experience and evidence. The foremost priority has to
be accorded to the areas which address absolute poverty and human deprivation. The
correlates of absolute poverty need to be covered under top priority. Unfinished targets
of MDGs which continue as SDGs deserve the utmost attention while prioritizing the SDG
targets.

The priorities require to be reflected in the development policies, strategies, perspective

plans, periodic plans and annual budgets of the governments at all levels in terms of
resources allocation, effective implementation, and continuous monitoring.Monitoring of
the priority one projects and programs need to be a more frequent phenomenon than
others and to be taken from the highest level of the government.

Sequencing the priorities would be necessary when priorities are not implementable at
once for several reasons including implementation capacity. Some priorities which (i) do
not require new legislation, new organization structure and new staffing, (ii) deliver low
hanging fruits of development output, and (iii) facilitate the implementation and delivery
of other top priorities deserve first order of sequencing.

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5.2.5 Further aligning SDGs into next periodic plans

Efforts made to integrate SDGs into the current periodic plan are not sufficient. An audit
of the same could be done to assess the gaps. However, it is not possible that every SDG
target is part and parcel of the plan. It is an ongoing process whereby subsequent plans
will have to further integrate SDGs into the planning and budgeting process. Besides, as
the federal set up of the state devolves planning and programming responsibilities at the
provincial and local government levels, many of the SDGs are to be implemented at the
sub national levels. Thus periodic planning, annual programming and financing SDGs at
the sub national level bears much significance in the context of emerging federal
government system.

5.2.6 Coordinating SDGs implementation at the federal, provincial and local levels

As the localization of the SDGs at the Provincial and Local levels is critical for the
universal, equitable and inclusive outcome of sustainable development efforts, it is
equally important to have a political setup at those levels that is willing and capable of
handling the development agenda effectively. Thus, along with preparing SDG-based
local development strategies at the Provincial and Local levels, the governmentsneed to
draw implementation and financing strategies while encompassing capacity development
interventions within the same strategies. With the new administrative and development
set of Federal, Provincial and Local (Village and Municipal) governments being
implemented since mid-March replacing the erstwhile structure of centre, districts and
village development committee /municipality based structure, itmight take some time for
Local and Provincial governments to be on board for SDGs implementation.

The localization of the SDGs implies that actors and institutions at the sub- national
level have a fundamental role to play in the formulation, implementation, and monitoring
of SDGs if they are to improve all people’s lives. Adaptation of the SDGs to fit local
realities will ensure that the national development goals will be achieved at both national
and sub-national levels. There is a realization from the implementation and outcome of
the MDGs that the national development goals have to be localized for higher, more
equitable, and inclusive outcomes. This experience can be exercised for the
implementation of SDGs; and a strategy needs to be developed to localize the SDGs at
provincial and local levels once the federal system is set up.

5.2.7 Improving governance around the SDGs

The importance of good governance and the strengthening of trust in government become
increasingly prominent in the context of the SDGs. As achievement of SDGs will require
substantial scaling up of public investment and ensuring its effectiveness,this in turn

66
requires good governance for better realization of the returns from the investment. The
government needs to address the legal deficits for good governance at the government,
non-government, cooperative, community and the private sectors by creating necessary
regulatory institutions for the enforcement of the same.

Ensuring access to justice and security in a post conflict situation and honoring human
rights which was almost non-existent during the period of conflict, and still difficult to
restore in post-conflict situation, is a big task for the government, parliament and human
right organizations. As the Constitution devolves judiciary function even at the Provincial
and Local Government level, capacity building at those levels would be critical to make
justice accessible and deliver it in time.

Good governance at all levels calls for moving in an expedited way towards implementing
federal system of governance with fully functioning decentralized sub-national and local
governance and improving service delivery.It is also necessary to engaging all local
stakeholders in the formulation and implementation of SDGs and disaggregating the
SDGs by gender, social group/ethnicity, and geography at the national as well as the local
level, making public service more accountable and public policies, programs and
implementation more transparent and result oriented.

Resource allocation is only a necessary condition for achieving the SDGs. It is more
important to improving implementation of program implementation at the local level by
strengthening local capacity, engaging local stakeholders in program formulation,
implementation and monitoring, strengthening public audit system, and making user
groups more accountable to the society. It is equally critical to committing zero tolerance
to corruption on the basis of a comprehensive strategy that combines prevention,
enforcement and public awareness with easy access to information, free media and a
dynamic civil society.

5.2.6 Putting apexmonitoring and evaluation system in place

The SDGs cut across all sectors and actors including the civil society organizations and
the private sector. As the MDGs were mostly public sector responsibilities, the monitoring
mechanism focusing on the programs and policies in the public sector were fairly enough
to track the progress and make necessary adjustment in the MDGs interventions. For
SDGs, the case is almost opposite in the sense that a large portion of activities are to be
held at the private sector and other non-government development actors. At the current
planning process, more than 55 per cent of the investment required to achieve the outputs
and outcomes of the plan are not monitored. This should be corrected, and all non-

67
government actors including the private sector should be brought under the monitoring
purview of the plan and the SDGs.

The institutional mechanism for SDGs monitoring should reflect the power and
responsibility of the monitoring agency. From this perspective, the high level SDGs
Steering Committee chaired by the Prime Minister should also be taking the final
responsibility of SDGs monitoring. The NPC Secretariat can function as the secretariat of
the Steering Committee. The initiatives taken by NPC to realign Monitoring and
Evaluation guideline in the context of SDGs monitoring and strengthening its institutional
capacity requires to be immediately implemented. There is a need to immediately enact
the Evaluation Law for enforcing Monitoring and Evaluation at all levels.

5.2.7 Strengthening data, reporting, and progress dissemination system

SDGs are very much data intensive so far as their monitoring and tracking the progress
is concerned. The aspiration of ‘leaving no one behind’ implies that the progress must be
tracked at a highly disaggregated level, also given the disparity in the initial condition of
development across age, sex, location, ethnicity, disability and income groups. But the
present data collection and processing system is highly aggregative. In this context, the
major data challenges pertain to disaggregation (by sex, age, ethnicity, disability, location,
administrative units of the state, and income or wealth), standardization (definition, unit
of measurement, method of computation, and open source. Besides, there are many
qualitative information to be collected -such as perceptions of citizens on public services,
corruptions and wellbeing. Some of the data are globally published and there is no country
ownership of the same. There is also huge difference between government recorded data
and those compiled by non-government organizations. This is particularly the case with
violence, crime, human trafficking, violation of human rights, etc.

A large number of surveys have to be done in the next few years to meet the data gap
and create base line data for the targets having no database so far. Existing surveys will
have to be tailored to the SDG monitoring needs particularly when it comes to gender,
social class and geographical location based target setting, analysis, and monitoring of
the SDG outcomes. Some of the SDG related targets also require intra household
information such as in nutrition, hunger, poverty, education, health, consumption and
income distribution. A system of macroeconomic policy audit will also have to be made in
order to ensure that such policies are reinforcing for achieving the aspired SDGs. This is
also for the reason that oftentimes macroeconomic policies are blind from environment,
gender and social perspectives.

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 Annexes

Annex Table 1

SDG 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 1.1 By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than
1.1.1 Population below US$ 1.25 per day (ppp value) (%) $1.25 a day 23.7a 17 13.7 10.4 4.9
1.1.2 Poverty gap ratio at US$ 1.25 per day (%) 5.6b 4.9 4.3 3.7 2.8
1.1.3 Poverty $1.9 Per day 36 c 28.5 22.9 17.3 8
1.1.4 Per capita Gross National Income (GNI) (US$) 766d 821 1647 2029 2500
Target 1.2 By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its
dimensions according to national definitions
1.2.1 Population below national poverty line (%) 21.6e 17.1 13.8 10.5 4.9
1.2.2 Women of all ages below national poverty line (%) - - - - 5
1.2.3 Children of all ages below national poverty line (%) - - - - 5
Target 1.3 Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030
achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable
1.3.1 Social protection expenditure in total budget (%) 11f 12.1 12.9 13.7 15
1.3.2 Population covered by social protection - - - - 100
1.3.3 Employed people living below US$ 1.25 per day in total employment (%) 22a 16.4 12.2 8.0 1
1.3.2 Proportion of population covered by social protection
Target 1.4 By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic
resources, as well as access to basic services,ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance,
natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including microfinance
1.4.1 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 44.2g 35.1 28.2 21.4 10.0
1.4.2 Share of bottom quintile in national consumption (%) 5h 5.8 6.6 7.2 8
1.4.3 Households having access to market center within 30 min walk (% of total) 45h 57.0 66.0 75.0 90
1.4.4 Households covered by formal financial services (% of total) 40i 50.7 58.7 66.7 80
1.4.5 Households having property/tangible assets in women’s name (% of total) 19.7i 25.1 29.2 33.2 40
Target 1.5 By 2030, build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations and reduce their exposure and
vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social and environmental shocks and disasters
1.5.1 Loss of lives from disaster (number) 8891k 331 268 205 100
1.5.2 Missing persons and persons affected by disaster per 100,000 (number) 415k 402 392 382 50
1.5.3 Economic vulnerability index (EVI) 26.8e 24.7 23.1 21.5 18.9
1.a Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development
cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries, in particular least developed
countries, to implement programmes and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions
1.a.1 Proportion of resources allocated by the govt directly to poverty reduction
prog - - - - -
1.a.2 Proportion of total govt spending on essential services (education, health and
social protection) - - - - -
Sources: a: MDGI (2015), b: NPC 2015c (Calculated from poverty data), c: The World Bank PovcalNet , d: MoF
(2015/2016), e: NPC (2016), f: MoF (2015), g: OPHI (2015), h: CBS (2011), i: NPC (2016), k: NPC (2015)
(PDNA)

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 Annex Table 2

SDG 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable
agriculture.

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 2.1 By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations,
including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round
2.1.1 Prevalence of undernourishment (%) 36.1a 27.3 20.6 14.0 3
2.1.2 Population spending more than two-third of total consumption on food (%) 20b 15.5 12.1 8.7 3
2.1.3 Per capita food grain production (Kg) 320c 376 418 460 530
2.1.4 Global Food Security Index (Score) 42.9d 57 66 75 90
Target 2.2 By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on
stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and
lactating women and older persons
2.2.1Underweight children under five years of age (-2 Standard Deviation) % 27e 22.6 17.8 13 5
2.2.2 Stunting (low height for age) children under five years of age (-2SD) % 36e 32.0 26.7 22.3 15
2.2.3 Wasting (low weight for height) children under five years of age (-2SD) % 10e 9.1 7.4 5.8 3
2.2.4 Population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption (%) 22.8 17.9 14.3 10.7 4.6
2.2.5 Anaemia among women of reproductive age (Adolescent girls) (%) 35.6 28.5 23.2 17.9 9
2.2.6 Anaemia among children under five years of age 22.6 18.2 14.8 11.5 6
2.2.7 Children aged 6-23 months consuming Minimum Acceptable Diet (MAD) (%) 32.3 25.8 21.0 16.1 8
2.2.8 Adolescent population with low BMI (< 18) (%) 17e 13.5 10.9 8.3 4
2.2.9 Prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding (%) 56.9e 65.7 72.3 79.0 90
Table 2.3 By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women,
indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other
productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm
employment
2.3.1 Land productivity (metric ton per hectare) 3.6 4.2 4.7 5.2 6
2.3.2 Fertilizer use (kg per hectare) 97 98 98 99 100
2.3.3 Access to finance for agriculture (agri loan as % of total bank loans) 5 7.7 9.7 11.7 15
2.3.4 Seed replacement rate (%) 14 21.5 27.1 32.7 42
2.3.5 Round the year irrigated land in total arable land (%) 40 50.7 58.7 66.7 80
2.3.6 Agriculture insurance coverage (% of agriculture households) 0.5 7.0 11.9 16.8 25
2.3.7 Proportion of landless farmers (%) 26 19.1 13.9 8.7 0
Target 2.4 By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that
increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate
change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality
2.4.1 Agricultural land at the present level (000 hectare) 2641 2641 2641 2641 2641
2.4.2 Cereal grain (Rice) productivity (metric ton per hectare) 3.4 4.1 4.6 5.1 6
2.4.3 Soil erosion - - - - -
2.4.4 Pesticide uses in agricultural production - - - - -
2.4.5 Bio-fertilizers in agricultural production (kg per hectare) 0.1 26.74 46.72 66.70 100

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Target 2.5 By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and
their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional
and international levels, and ensure access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of
genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed

2.5.1 Establish DNA bank for variety of seeds (number) 1

2.5.2 Establish DNA bank for variety of plants (number) - - - - -
2.5.3 Establish DNA bank for endangered animal species (number) - - - - -
2.5.4 Community Seed banks (number) 115

Target 2.a Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural
research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks in order to enhance
agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countriesand policies to end poverty
in all its dimensions

2.a1 Government Expenditure in agriculture (% of total budget) 8 8.5 8.9 9.3 10

Target 2.b Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the
parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in
accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round

2.b1 - - - - -
2.b2 - - - - -
Target 2.c Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate
timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility

2.c1 - - - - -
2.c2 - - - - -
Sources: a: NPC (2016) (14th Plan), b: CBS (2011), c: MoF (2016), d: GFSI (2015), e: NDHS (2016)

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 Annex Table 3

SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 3.1 By 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births
3.1.1 Maternal mortality ratio (per 100,000 live births) 258a 145b 106 86 69
3.1.2 Live births attended by skilled birth attendants (%) 58s 68.5 73 79 90
Target 3.2 By 2030, end preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age
3.2.1 Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births) 39s 30 28 26 22
3.2.2 Neonatal mortality rate (per 1,000 live births) 23s 20 17 14 10
Target 3.3 By 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis,
water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases
Target 3.3.1 By 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS
3.3.1.1 HIV prevalence for the overall population aged 15-49 years (%) 0.23d 0.17 0.13 0.08 0.01
3.3.1.2 HIV prevalence among men and women aged 15–24 years (%) 0.03d 0.03 0.02 0.02 0.01
3.3.1.3 Population with advanced HIV infection receiving Antiretroviral 38.8d 55.1 67.4 79.6 100
combination therapy (%)
Target 3.3.2 By 2030, end the epidemics of tuberculosis
3.3.2 Prevalence of Tuberculosis (TB) per 100,000 population 124f 164 129 94 35
Target 3.3.3 By 2030, end the epidemics of malaria
3.3.3.1 Total number of confirmed Malaria cases 1352f 1000b 721 0f 0
3.3.3.2 Malaria new incidence rate per 1000 population - - - - -
Target 3.3.4 By 2030, combat hepatitis
3.3.4.1 Hepatitis B incidence per 1000 population - - - - -
3.3.4.2 Confirmed Hepatitis cases (number) 101b 74 54 34 0
3.3.4.3 Laboratory confirmed cases of Hepatitis A (number) 147f 108 78 49 0
3.3.4.4 Cases of unspecified viral Hepatitis (number) 58f 43 31 19 0
Target 3.3.5 By 2030, end the epidemics of neglected tropical diseases
3.3.5.1 Registered prevalence rate of leprosy (%) 0.89f 0.61 0.44 0.28 0
3.3.5.2 Average prevalence of Lymphatic Filariasis (%) 13g 9.5 6.9 4.3 0
3.3.5.3 Cases of Dengue (number) 302g 221 161 100 0
3.3.5.4 People who die annually due to rabies (number) 13f 10 7 4 0
3.3.5.5 Active Trachoma cases (number) 136i 100 73 45 0
3.3.5.6 Average prevalence of Soil Transmitted Helminthes among school going
15i 11 8 5
children (%)
0
Target 3.3.6 By 2030, combat water-borne diseases
3.3.6.1 Incidence of Diarrhea (per 1,000 under 5 years children) 501g 367 267 167 0
3.3.6.2 Children under age 5 with Diarrhea in the last 2 weeks (%) 12g 8.8 6.4 4.0 0
3.3.6.3 Cases of Typhoid (number) 4229g 3101 2255 1409 0
3.3.6.4 Cases of Cholera (number) 21g 15 11 7 0

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Target 3.3.7 By 2030, combat other communicable diseases

3.3.7.1 Laboratory confirmed cases of Japanese Encephalitis (JE) (number) 118i 87 63 39 0

3.3.7.2 Laboratory confirmed cases of Influenza (H1N1) (number) 204 i 150 109 68 0
Target 3.4.1 By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and
treatment
3.4.1.1 Probability of dying between ages 30 and 70 from Cardiovascular Diseases 22k 18.1 15.1 12.2 7.3
(CVDs), Cancers, Chronic Respiratory Diseases and Diabetes, %
3.4.1.2 Deaths from Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) out of all Deaths (%) 43.7l 35.9 30.1 24.2 14.5
3.4.1.3 Deaths from CVDs out of all Deaths (%) 22.3l 18.3 15.3 12.4 7.4
3.4.1.4 Deaths from Cancers out of all Deaths (%) 7l 5.7 4.8 3.9 2.3
3.4.1.5 Deaths from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (COPD) out of all 4.9 k 4.0 3.4 2.7 1.6
Deaths (%)
3.4.1.6 Deaths from Diabetes out of all Deaths (%) 1.7 l 1.4 1.1 0.9 0.5
3.4.1.7 People (aged 15 – 69) with raised Total Cholesterol (≥190 mg/dl) (%) 22.7 l 18.6 15.6 12.6 7.5
3.4.1.8 People (aged 15 – 69) with raised Blood Pressure levels (SBP ≥ 140 and/or 88.3l 72.6 60.8 49.0 29.4
DBP ≥ 90 mm Hg or not currently on medication for raised blood pressure (%)
3.4.1.9 People (aged 15 – 69) not engaging in vigorous activity (%) 53.6 l 44.05 36.9 29.7 17.8
3.4.1.10 People (aged 15 – 69) who are overweight (%) 21.6 l 17.8 14.9 12.0 7.2
3.4.1.11 People (aged 15 – 69) who currently drink or drank alcohol in the past 30
17.4 l 14.3 12.0 9.7 5.8
days (%)
3.4.1.12 People (aged 15 – 69) who currently smoke tobacco daily (%) 15.8 l 13.0 10.8 8.7 5.2
Target 3.4.2 By 2030, promote mental health and well being
3.4.2.1 Mental health problems (%) 14.0 k 11.5 9.7 7.8 4.7
3.4.2.2 Suicide rate (per 100,000 population) 25m 17.5 12.0 6.5 1
3.4.2.3 Women (aged 15 – 24) , very or somewhat satisfied with their life (%) 80.8c 84.6 87.4 90.3 95

Target 3.5.2 Strengthen the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotic drug abuse and harmful use of
alcohol

3.5.2.1 % of people who received pharmacological treatment for substance use - - - - -

disorders
3.5.2.2 % of people who received psychosocial treatment for substance use - - - - -
disorders
3.5.2.3 Alcohol use disorders and alcohol dependence (% of 15 years plus 1.5n 1 1 1 0.5
population)
3.5.2.4 Alcohol consumption per capita (15 plus) in liters 2.2 n 2 2 1 1
3.5.2.3 Estimated number of hard drug users 91534b 73227 59497 45767 22884
Target 3.6 By 2020, halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents
Target 3.6.1 By 2020, halve the number of deaths from road traffic accidents (RTA)
3.6.1.1 RTA Mortality (per 100,000 population) 34p 25 18 11 0
Target 3.6.2 By 2020, halve the number of injuries from road traffic accidents
3.6.2.1 Serious Injuries (per 100,000 population) 72p 53 39 25 2

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3.6.2.2 Slight Injuries (per 100,000 population) 164p 121 90 58 5
Target 3.7 By 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning,
information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes
3.7.1 Contraceptive prevalence rate (modern methods) (%) 49.6c 42.8 37.7 32.7 75
3.7.2 Proportion of births attended by Skilled Birth Attendant (SBA) (%) 55.6 c 46.4 39.5 32.7 90
3.7.3 Adolescent Fertility Rate (births per 1,000 women age 15-19 years) 88b 72.5 60.9 49.3 30

3.7.4 Institutional delivery (%) 55.2 c 64.5 71.4 78.4 90

3.7.5 Postnatal Care (PNC) for mothers (mothers who received care within two
56.7s 66.5 72.9 79.3 90
days of childbirth, (%))
3.7.6 Unmet need for family planning (%) 23s 21.4 18.3 15.2 10
3.7.7 Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (births per women aged 15-49 years) (%) 2.3 c 2.2 2.2 2.1 2
3.7.8 Households within 30 minutes travel time to health facility (%) 61.8 c 69.3 75.0 80.6 90
3.7.9 Uterine prolapsed among women of reproductive age (15-49 years) (%) 7c 5.2 3.8 2.4 0.1
Target 3.8 Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care
services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all

3.8.1 Women having 4 antenatal care visits as per protocol (among live births) % 69 74.6 78.8 83.0 90

3.8.1.2 Tuberculosis treatment success rate 5.3s 6.02 6.6 7.1 8

3.8.1.3 People living with HIV enrolled in ART (%) 26.5 19.4 14.1 8.8 0.01
3.8.1.4 Population aged 18 years and above with raised blood glucose who are
- - - - -
currently taking medication (%)
3.8.1.5 Population aged 18 years and above with raised blood glucose who are - - - - -
currently taking medication (%)
3.8.1.6 Children age 12-23 months who received all vaccinations (Measles, BCG,
OVP3, DPT3, HepB3, Hib3, etc.) recommended in the national immunization
84.5c 88.6 91.7 94.8 100
schedule by their first birthday (%)
3.8.2.1 People covered by health insurance or a public health system (%) 1 27.4 47.2 67.0 100
3.8.2.2 Incidence of impoverishment due to OOP expenditure in health (%) - - - - -
3.8.2.3 ART Coverage (%) - - - - -
3.8.2.4 Population aged 18 years and above with raised blood glucose who are - - - - -
currently taking medication (%)
3.8.2.5 Population aged 18 years and above with raised blood glucose who are - - - - -
currently taking medication (%)
3.8.2.6 People covered by health insurance or a public health system (%) 1 27.4 47.2 67.0 100
3.8.2.7 Incidence of impoverishment due to OOP expenditure in health 0 0 0 0 0
Target 3.9 By 2030, substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and
soil pollution and contamination
3.9.1 Mortality attributed to households and ambient air pollution (%) - - - - -
3.9.2 Mortality attributed to unsafe water, unsafe sanitation and lack of hygiene
(exposure to unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene for all WASH Services (%) - - - - -

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3.9.3 Deaths from hazardous chemicals (toxic substances, pesticides, etc) 22h 16 12 7 0
(number)
3.9.3.2 Illnesses from hazardous chemicals (toxic substances, pesticides, etc) 1205h 910 689 468 100
(number)
3.9.3 Mortality attributed to households and ambient air pollution (%) - - - - -

Target 3.a Strengthen the implementation of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in
all countries, as appropriate
3.a.1 Age-standardized prevalence of current tobacco use among persons aged 15
15.8b 12.92 10.76 8.60 5
years and older
Target 3.b Support the research and development of vaccines and medicines for the communicable and non‑communicable
diseases that primarily affect developing countries, provide access to affordable essential medicines and vaccines, in
accordance with the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, which affirms the right of developing
countries to use to the full the provisions in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
regarding flexibilities to protect public health, and, in particular, provide access to medicines for all

3.b.1 Percentage of ODA out of health sector budget - - - - -

3.b.2 Percent of ODA spent in health system research and development - - - - -
Target 3.c Substantially increase health financing and the recruitment, development, training and retention of the health
workforce in developing countries, especially in least developed countries and small island developing States

3.c.1 Health worker population ratio (per 1000 population)

3.c.2 Expenditure on health as a proportion of total budget expenditure 5.5t 5.90 6.20 6.50 7
Target 3.d Strengthen the capacity of all countries, in particular developing countries, for early warning, risk reduction and
management of national and global health risks
3.d1 Percentage of health facilities reporting on early warning system (epidemic, - - - - -
flood, etc.) for health risk reduction within 24 hours
3.d2 Percentage of health facilities reporting on disease outbreak within 24 hours - - - - -
Sources: a: NDHS (2011), b: NPC (2016) , c: CBS (2014), d : NCASC (2015), e: MoHP (2015) (Health sector
strategy), f: MoHP (2015) (Annual report), g: MoHP-DoHS (2014) (Annual Report), h: MoHP (2013), i: MoHP
(2014), j: WHO (2012), k: MoHP/WHO (2014), l: NHRC (2013), m: WHO (2014), n: WHO (2015), o: NPC
(2016), p: Thapa (2013), q: MoHP (2009) , r: MoF (2016), s: NDHS (2016)

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 Annex Table 4

SDG 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities
for all

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 4.1 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education
leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes
4.1.1 Net enrolment rate in primary education (%) 96.6a 98.5 99.0 99.0 99.5
4.1.2 Primary completion rate (%) 87.5 a 90.7 93.1 95.5 99.5
4.1.3 Proportion of pupils enrolled in grade one who reach grade eight (%) 76.6 a 81.5 92.0 93.0 95
4.1.4 Ratio of girls (to boys) enrolled in grade one who reach grade eight 1.04 a 1.03 1.02 1.01 1
4.1.5 Ratio of girls (to boys) enrolled in grade one who reach grade twelve 1.1 a 1.04 1.03 1.02 1
4.1.6 Ratio of students to teacher in basic education (up to 8 level) 40 a 36 33 30 25
4.1.7 Ratio of students to teacher in secondary education (up to 12 level) 39 a 35.3 32.5 29.7 25
4.1.8 Proportion of trained teachers in primary and secondary education (% of total
95 a 96.5 97.5 98.4 100
teachers)
4.1.9 Learning Achievement / Score (Math, Nepali and English) for Class 5 55.6b 60.8 64.6 68.5 75
4.1.10 Gross Enrollment secondary education (grade 9 to 12) 56.7 c 72 90 95 99
Target 4.2 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary
education so that they are ready for primary education
4.2.1 Coverage of child grant for pre-primary education (number in ‘000) 506 a 1038 1437 1835 2500
4.2.2 Day meal program coverage (%) 17 31 41 51 68
4.2.3 Attendance to early childhood education (Gross Enrollment) (%) 81.0c 85.8 89.4 93.0 99

Target 4.3 By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary
education, including university
4.3.1 Ratio of girls enrollment in technical and vocational education 0.53 0.66 0.75 0.84 1
4.3.2 Ratio of girls enrollment in tertiary education (graduate level) 1.05g 1.04 1.04 1.03 1.02
4.3.3 Scholarship coverage (% of total students) 37a 38.3 39.3 40.3 42
Target 4.4 By 2030, increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational
skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship
4.4.1 Youth and adults having technical and vocation skills (number in ‘000, 50b 165 300 350 480
4.4.2 Working
annual) age population with technical and vocational training (%) 25 38 48 58 75
4.4.3 Internet users (percent of adult population) 46.6 a 59.5 69.2 78.9 95
Target 4.5 By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access
4.5.1 Gender parity index (GPI) (primary school) 1.02a 1.01 1.03 1.03 1
4.5.2 Gender Parity Index (GPI) (secondary school) 1a 1 1 1 1
4.5.3 Gender Parity Index (GPI) based on literacy (above 15 years) 0.62a 0.72 0.80 0.87 1
Target 4.6 By 2030, ensure that all youth and at least 95 per cent of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and
numeracy
4.6.1 Literacy rate of 15-24 years old (%) 88.6c 91.37 95 98 99

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4.6.2 Literacy rate of 15-24 years old (women) (%) 87.4b 90.5 92.8 95.1 99
4.6.3 Numeracy all (who can read and write numeric terms) of 15 years and older
(%) 62.2d 71.7 78.9 86.1 98

4.6.4 Numeracy of female (who can read and write numeric terms) of 15 years and
older (%) 51.9e 63.4 72.0 80.6 95

4.6.5 Public spending per student (Basic education in ‘000) 15a 19 22 25 30

Target 4.7 By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development,
including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender
equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of
culture’s contribution to sustainable development

4.7.1 Human assets index 66.60e 68.85 70.54 72.23 76.00

4.7.2 Gender development index 0.53f 0.58 0.61 0.64 0.70
4.7.3 Extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii) education for
sustainable development, including gender equality and human rights, are
mainstreamed at all levels in: (a) national education policies, (b) curricula, (c)
teacher education and (d) student assessment (In scale of 0 to 5: Where "0" is none) - - - - -

Target 4.a Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-
violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all
4.a.1 Schools with access to electricity (%) - - - - -
4.a.2 Schools with access to internet (%) 3.9c 28.6 47.2 65.8 99
4.a.3 Schools with "WASH" facilities (%) 28.2c 53.0 71.5 90.1 99
4.a.4 Disability friendly schools (%) - - - - -
Target 4.b By 2020, expand by [x] per cent globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in
particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher
education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and
scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries
4.b1 - - - - -
4.b2 - - - - -
Target 4.c By 2030, increase by [x] per cent the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for
teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing States
4.c1 Proportion of teachers in primary education who have received at least the
97 100 100 100 100
minimum organized teacher training, (%)
4.c2 Proportion of teachers in basic education who have received at least the
92 100 100 100 100
minimum organized teacher training, (%)
Sources: a: MoF (2016), b: NPC (2016), c: MoE (2016) (School Sector Development Plan), d: CBS (2013), e:
UNDESA (2015), f: UNDP (2014), g: UGC (2015)

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 Annex Table 5

SDG 5: Achieve gender equality and empower al women and girls

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 5.1 End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere

Wage equality for similar work (ration of women’s wage to that of men) 0.62a 0.72 0.80 0.87 1
5.1.2 Gender Inequality Index 0.49b 0.38 0.29 0.20 0.05
5.1.3 Gender Empowerment Measurement (Index) 0.568 0.60 0.63 0.66 0.7
Target 5.2 Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including
trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation
5.2.1 Sex ratio at birth (female to male) 0.96a 0.97 0.98 0.99 1
5.2.2 Ratio of women to men in healthy life expectancy 1.03 1.02 1.02 1.01 1
5.2.3 Women aged 15-49 years who experience Physical / sexual violence (%) 26a 19.1 13.9 8.7 0
5.2.4 Girls Trafficking (in number) 7000c 5133 3733 2333 0
Target 5.3 Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation

5.3.1 Women aged 15-19 years who are married or in union (%) 24.5a 18.0 13.1 8.2 0
5.3.2 Lifetime Physical and/or Sexual violence (%) 28.4 22.2 17.5 12.8 5
5.3.3 Discrimination for Chhaupadi and mensturation (%) 12.0 8.8 6.4 4.0 0
5.3.4 Children age 1-14 years who experienced psychological aggression or physical 81.7d 59.9 43.6 27.2 0
punishment during the last one month (%)
Target 5.4 Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and
social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally
appropriate
5.4.1 Ratio of women to men participation in labour force 0.93 0.95 0.96 0.98 1
5.4.2 Average hours spent in domestic work by women 14 11.87 10.27 8.67 6
5.4.3 Social protection coverage of women in informal market - - - - -
Target 5.5 Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-
making in political, economic and public life
5.5.1 Seats held by women in the national parliament (%) 29.5 32.30 34.40 36.50 40
5.5.2 Seats held by women in the local government bodies (%) 33 36.20 38.60 41.00 45
5.5.3 Seats held by women in provincial parliament (%) - - - - -
5.5 4 Women's participation in decision making level in the private sector (%) 25 30.33 34.33 38.33 45
5.5.5 Women's participation in cooperative sector (%) 50 50 50 50 50
5.5.6 Women in public service decision making positions (% of total employees) 2.0e 3.5 4.6 5.7 7.5
5.5.7 Ratio of women to men in professional and technical workers (%) 24 28 31 35 40
Target 5.6 Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with
the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for
Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences

5.6.1 Awareness about reproductive rights among girls and women (%) - - - - -

86
5.6.2 Receiving specific support and service provisions related to sexual health care - - - - -
to the poor, discriminated and marginalized groups (%)
Target 5.a Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control
over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national
laws
5.a1 Proportion of pro-gender budget (directly benefiting women) (%) 22f 24.1 25.7 27.3 30
5.a2 Number of enterprises owned by women - - - - -
5.a.3 Women's ownership of property (land and house) 26 29.7 32.5 35.3 40
Target 5.b Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote
the empowerment of women

5.b1 Exposure to mass media by women aged 15-49 years (%) 11.1d 25.0 33.2 41.63 55.5
5.b2 Use of computers by women aged 15-24 years (%) 21.7d 41.25 47.7 54.3 65.1
5.b3 Use of Internet by women aged 15-24 years (%) 19.6d 62.0 71.7 81.7 98.0
Target 5.c Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment
of all women and girls at all levels
5.c1 - - - - -
5.c2 - - - - -

Sources: a: NPC (2016) (Estimation based on labor force and census data), b: UNDP (2014), c: NHRC (2016),
d: CBS (2014), e: MoGA (2016) , f: MoF (2015)

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 Annex Table 6

SDG 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 6.1 By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all

6.1.1 Household with access to piped water supply (%) 49.5a 60.3 68.4 76.5 90
6.1.2 Basic water supply coverage (%) 87a 90.2 92.6 95 99
6.1.3 Households with E. coli risk level in household water ≥ 1 cfu/100ml) (%) 82.2b 60.3 43.8 27.4 0
6.1.4 Household with E. coli risk level in source water ≥ 1 cfu/100ml (%) 71.1a 52.1 37.9 23.7 0
6.1.5 Population using safe drinking water (%) 15a 35 50 65 90
6.1.6 Turbidity (Nephelometric turbidity unit - NTU) (%) 30c 23.3 18.3 13.3 5
Target 6.2 By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying
special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations
6.2.1 Households using improved sanitation facilities which are not shared (%) 60d 69.3 78.7 85.7 95
6.2.2 Proportion of population using latrine (%) 67.6e 75.7 83.8 90.0 98
6.2.3 Local authority areas that have declared Open Defecation Free (%) 41f 56.5 71.9 83.5 99
6.2.4 Sanitation coverage (%) 70g 77.7 77.5 83.3 99
6.2.5 Urban households with toilets connected to sewer systems/ proper FSM (%) 30a 46 62 74 90
Target 6.3 By 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous
chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated waste water and increasing recycling and safe reuse.
6.3.1 Proportion of untreated domestic waste water (%) 99c 89.9 83.1 76.3 65
6.3.2 Proportion of untreated industrial waste water (%) 99 c 75.3 57.5 39.7 10
6.3.3 Proportion of bodies of water with good ambient water quality - - - - -
Target 6.4 By 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and
supply of freshwater to address water scarcity and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity

6.4.1 Wastage of water while using it (per person per day in liters) - - - - -
6.4.2 Wastage of water – Irrigation - - - - -
6.4.3 Availability of freshwater (per person per day in liters) - - - - -
6.4.4 Level of water stress: freshwater withdrawal as a proportion of available - - - - -
6.4.5 Non- Revenue
freshwater resources Water 20c 16 13 10 5
Target 6.5 By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through trans boundary
cooperation as appropriate
6.5.1 Degree of integrated water resources management implementation (0-100) 0c 16 28 40 60
6.5.2 Proportion of trans boundary basin area with an operational arrangement for
water cooperation

Target 6.6 By 2020, protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers
and lakes

6.6.1 Change in the extent of water-related ecosystems over time - - - - -

6.6.2 Extraction of ground water - - - - -

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Target 6.a By 2030, expand international cooperation and capacity-building support to developing countries in water- and
sanitation-related activities and programmes, including water harvesting, desalination, water efficiency, wastewater
treatment, recycling and reuse technologies
Target 6.b Support and strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management

Sources: a: MWSS (2016), b: NPC (2016), c: Based on consultation with thematic committee, d: CBS (2014), e:
CBS (2013), f : NMIP (2014), g: NPC (2013)

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 Annex Table 7

SDG 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 7.1 By 2030, ensure universal access t affordable, reliable and modern energy services
7.1.1 Per capita energy (final) consumption (in GJ) 16a 18.13 19.73 21.33 24
7.1.2 Proportion of population access to electricity (%) 74b 80.7 85.7 90.7 99
7.1.3 Households using solid fuel as primary source of energy for cooking (%) 74.7d 10
7.1.4 People using liquid petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking and heating (%) 18b 23.60 27.80 32.00 39
7.1.5 Electricity consumption (k Wh per capita) 80e 458.7 742.7 1026.7 1500
7.2.1 Share of renewable energy in total energy (final) consumption (%) 11.9d 22.1 29.7 37.3 50
7.2.2 Installed capacity of hydropower (MW) 782e 4573 7417 10260 15000
7.2.3 Grid connected to solar PVC (MW) 0.10e 266.7 466.7 666.7 1000
7.3.1 Commercial energy use per unit of GDP (ToE/mRs) 3.20d 3.28 3.17 3.15 3.14
7.3.2 Energy efficiency in Industry ( MJ per 1000 rupees of product) 47.20f 45.28 43.84 42.40 40
7.3.3 Efficient lighting systems CFL (in residential & commercial), (%) 20 58.0 80.0 50.0 0
7.3.4 Efficient lighting systems LED (in residential & commercial), (%) 0.1 7.6 15.0 50.0 100
7.3.5 Higher efficiency appliances (in residential & commercial) (%) 10 40.0 50.0 68.0 100
7.3.6 Electric vehicles in public transport systems (%) 1 37.8 50.0 53.8 60
Target 7.a By 2030, enhance international cooperation to facilitate access to clean energy research and technology, including
renewable energy, energy efficiency and advanced and cleaner fossil-fuel technology, and promote investment in energy
infrastructure and clean energy technology
7.a1 - - - - -
7.a2 - - - - -
Target 7.b By 2030, expand infrastructure and upgrade technology for supplying modern and sustainable energy services for
all in developing countries, in particular least developed countries and small island developing States
7.b1 - - - - -
7.b2 - - - - -
Sources: a: Consultation with thematic committee and experts from NEA, b: CBS (2011), c: CBS (2014), d: NPC
(2016), e: NPC (2015), f: CBS (2014a)

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 Annex Table 8

SDG 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive
employment and decent work for all

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

8.1 Sustain per capita economic growth in accordance with national circumstances and, in particular, at least 7 per cent
gross domestic product growth per annum in the least developed countries
8.1.1 Per capita GDP growth 2.3a 5.5d 6.0 6.5 7
Target 8.2 Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation,
including through a focus on high-value-added and labour-intensive sectors
8.2.1 Growth of agricultural sector (%) 0.8a 4.7 4.8 4.9 5
8.2.2 Growth of construction sector (%) 3.1 13.7 14.5 14.9 15
8.2.3 Annual growth of real GDP per employed person (%) 1.6 3.8 5.5 7.2 10
Target 8.3 Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation,
entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-
sized enterprises, including through access to financial services
8.3.1 Contribution of Micro- ,Small-, and Medium-scale enterprises in GDP (%) - - - - -
8.3.2 Proportion of informal employment in non-agriculture employment (%) 70b 54 42 30 10
8.3.3 Access to Cooperatives (% of households within 30 min walk) 54 60.9 66.1 71.3 80
Target 8.4 Improve progressively, through 2030, global resource efficiency in consumption and production and endeavor to
decouple economic growth from environmental degradation, in accordance with the 10-year framework of programmes on
sustainable consumption and production, with developed countries taking the lead
8.4.1 Material Intensity in total manufacturing (Rupees of material input to achieve 66.1c 64.4 63.2 62 60
the output value of Rs 100)
Target 8.5 By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young
people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value
8.5.1 Average hourly earnings of female and male employees, by occupation, age 32d 50.1 63.7 77.3 100
and persons with disabilities
8.5.2 Underemployment rate (15-59 y) (%) 27.8d 23.1 19.5 15.9 10
Target 8.6 By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training
8.6.1 Youth underemployment rate (%) 35.8d 28.9 23.8 18.6 10
Target 8.7 Take immediate and effective measures to secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child
labour, eradicate forced labour and, by 2025, end child labour in all its forms, including the recruitment and use of child
soldiers
8.7.1 Children working under hazardous conditions (%) 30d 22 16 10 0
Target 8.8 Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant
workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment management

8.8.1 Numbers of fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries 68 54 58 33 15

8.8.2 Illegal migrant workers to total migrants (%) - - - - -
Target 8.9 By 2030, devise and implement policies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local
culture and products
8.9.1 Tourist arrival (million) 0.8e 1.6 1.9 2.2 3

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8.9.2 Tourism direct GDP as a proportion of total GDP (%) 2.6 4.0 5.1 6.2 8
8.9.3 Annual number of jobs in tourism industries (‘000) 90.0 332.7 514.7 696 1000
Target 8.10 Strengthen the capacity of domestic financial institutions to encourage and expand access to banking, insurance
and financial services for all
8.10.1 Life insurance coverage (%) 5d 10.3 14.3 18.3 25
8.10.2 Commercial bank branches per 100000 adult population (number) 18a 23 26 30 36
8.10.3 Automated teller machines per 100000 adult population (number) 11a 17 21 26 33
8.10.4 Proportion of adults (15 years and older) with an account at a bank or other 34.0d 51.3 64.3 77.3 99.0
financial institution or with a mobile-money-service provider (%)
Sources: a: MoF (2016), b: ILO (2014), c: CBS (2014a), d: NPC (2016)

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 Annex Table 9

SDG 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster
innovation

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 9.1 Develop quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder
infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for
all
9.1.1 Road density (km/sq km) 0.44a 1.30 1.35 1.41 1.50
9.1.2 Paved road density (km/sq km) 0.01a 0.07 0.12 0.17 0.25
9.1.3 Passenger , by mode of transport (Road) - - - - -
Target 9.2 Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and, by 2030, significantly raise industry’s share of
employment and gross domestic product, in line with national circumstances, and double its share in least developed
countries
9.2.1 Industry’s share in GDP (%) 15b 17.7 19.7 21.7 25
9.2.2 Manufacturing value added as a proportion of GDP (%) 6.6b 8.8 10.5 12.2 15
9.2.3 Manufacturing employment as a proportion of total employment (%) 6.6 8.3 9.6 10.9 13.0
Target 9.3 Increase the access of small-scale industrial and other enterprises, in particular in developing countries, to
financial services, including affordable credit, and their integration into value chains and markets

9.3.1 Proportion of small-scale industries integrated to value chain and markets - - - - -

9.3.2 Proportion of small-scale industries with a loan or line of credit 20c 22.7 24.7 26.7 30.0

Target 9.4 By 2030, upgrade infrastructure and retrofit industries to make them sustainable, with increased resource-use
efficiency and greater adoption of clean and environmentally sound technologies and industrial processes, with all
countries taking action in accordance with their respective capabilities
9.4.1 CO2 per capita in manufacturing and construction value added (grams) 0.04b 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04
Target 9.5 Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of industrial sectors in all countries, in
particular developing countries, including, by 2030, encouraging innovation and increasing the number of research and
development workers per 1 million people by 75 percent and public and private research and development spending
9.5.1 Research and development expenditure in proportion to GDP (%) 0.3d 8.53 8.93 9.33 1.5
9.5.2 Researchers (in full-time equivalent) per million inhabitants - - - - -
9.5.3 Enrollment in Science and Technology in proportion to total enrollment (%) 6.8e 9.0 10.6 12.3 15
9.5.4 Proportion of population covered by a mobile network, by technology 94.5f 96.0 97.1 98.2 100
9.5.5 Tele density (% of population) 110f 112.7 114.7 116.7 120
Sources:a: MoPIT (2015), b: CBS (2014), c: ILO (2014), d: 2010 data from www.knoema.com, e: MoE (2015), f:
NPC (2016)

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 Annex Table 10

SDG 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 10.1 By 2030, progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a rate
higher than the national average
10.1.1 Consumption inequality (measured by the Gini coefficient) 0.33a 0.28 0.25 0.22 0.16
10.1.2 Income inequality (Gini coefficient) 0.46b 0.40 0.35 0.31 0.23
10.1.3 Share of bottom 40% of population in total consumption (%) 18.7c 17.4 21.2 15.6 23.4
10.1.4 Share of bottom 40% of population in total income (%) 11.9c 13.1 14.7 15.9 18
10.1.5 PALMA Index 1.3d 1.22 1.16 1.10 1
Target 10.2 By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex,
disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status
10.2.1 Social Empowerment Index 0.41e 0.48 0.54 0.60 0.7
10.2.2 Economic Empowerment Index 0.34 e 0.43 0.51 0.58 0.7
10.2.3 Political Empowerment Index 0.65 e 0.70 0.74 0.78 0.85
Target 10.3 Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome, including by eliminating discriminatory laws,
policies and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies and action in this regard
10.3.1 Proportion of the population reporting having personally felt discriminated
against or harassed within the previous 12 months on the basis of a ground of
- - - - -
discrimination prohibited under international human rights law
10.3.2 Finished primary school on time (ratio of richest vs poorest quintile) 2.20f 1.88 1.64 1.40 1
10.3.3 Childhood free of stunting (ratio of richest vs poorest quintile) 1.60f 1.44 1.32 1.20 1
Target 10.4 Adopt policies, especially fiscal, wage and social protection policies, and progressively achieve greater equality

10.4.1 Ratio of wage index to consumer price index 2.94g 2.96 2.97 2.98 3
10.4.2 Labour share of GDP, comprising wages and social protection transfers - - - - -
10.4.3 Population receiving social protection transfers (%) 18h 18.5 18.9 19.3 20
Target 10.5 Improve the regulation and monitoring of global financial markets and institutions and strengthen the
implementation of such regulations
10.5.1 Proportion of farm households covered by microfinance (%) 24 28.3 31.5 34.7 40
10.5.2 Financial Risk Index 27 25.6 11.3 4.6 1
10.5.3 Global Competitive Index (Score) 3.9h 4.1 4.9 5.3 6.0
10.5.4 Doing Business Index (country ranking) 100h 95 81 73 60

Target 10.6 Ensure enhanced representation and voice for developing countries in decision-making in global international
economic and financial institutions in order to deliver more effective, credible, accountable and legitimate institutions
10.6.1 - - - - -
10.6.2 - - - - -
Target 10.7 Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the
implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies
10.7.1 Proportion of migrants receiving complete orientation before migration - - - - -

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10.7.2 Recruitment cost borne by migrant labor (average of cost for Malayasia, 1000h 867 767 667 500
South Korea and Middle East - USD)
Target 10.a Implement the principle of special and differential treatment for developing countries, in particular least
developed countries, in accordance with World Trade Organization agreements
10.a.1 - - - - -
10.a.2 - - - - -
Target 10.b Encourage official development assistance and financial flows, including foreign direct investment, to States
where the need is greatest, in particular least developed countries, African countries, small island developing States and
landlocked developing countries, in accordance with their national plans and programmes
10.b.1 - - - - -
10.b.2 - - - - -
Target 10.c By 2030, reduce to less than 3 per cent the transaction costs of migrant remittances and eliminate remittance
corridors with costs higher than 5 per cent
10.c.1 Remittance costs as a proportion of the amount remitted 3.97 3.5 3.1 2.7 2
10.c.2 - - - - -
Sources: a: MoF (2015), b: MoF (2016), c : CBS (2011), d: UNDP (2015), e: NPC (2015), f: Estimation based on
nutrition data, g: NRB (2015), h: NPC (2016)

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 Annex Table 11

SDG 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 11.1 By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums
11.1.1 Population living in slum and squatters (‘000) 500a 400 325 250 125
11.1.2 Household units roofed with thatched/straw roof (%) 19b 15.3 12.5 9.7 5.0
11.1.3 Households living in safe houses (%) 29.8c 37.8 43.9 49.9 60.0
Target 11.2 By 2030, provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road
safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women,
children, persons with disabilities and older persons
11.2.1 Availability of safe road (%) 0.1d 13.4 23.4 33.4 50
11.2.2 Availability of safe public transport (%) 0.1d 13.4 23.4 33.4 50
11.2.3 Access to paved road within 30 minutes of walking (%) 51.4e 59.0 64.7 70.5 80
Target 11.3 By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and
sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries
11.3.1 Planned new cities (number) 10f 23 33 43 60
11.3.2 Households residing with 5 and more persons (%) 46.7g 39.6 34.2 28.9 20
11.3.3 Proportion of cities with a direct participation structure of civil society in
- - - - -
urban planning and management that operate regularly and democratically
11.3.4 Ratio of land consumption rate to population growth rate - - - - -
Target 11.4 Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage
11.4.1 Budget allocated for the protection of natural and cultural heritage (%) 1.15h 1.38 1.55 1.72 2
11.4.2 Total number of effected cultural and religious heritage due to earthquake 2900 h 1450 1063 483 0
Target 11.5 By 2030, significantly reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected and decrease the
economic losses relative to gross domestic product caused by disasters, including water-related disasters, with a focus on
protecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations
11.5.l Houses fully damaged due to earthquake (‘000) 499 h 71 0 0 0
11.5.2 Houses partially damaged due to earthquake (‘000) 257 h 37 0 0 0
11.5.3 Health facilities fully damaged due to earthquake (‘000) 4904 h 701 0 0 0
11.5.4 Health facilties partially damaged due to earthquake (‘000) 1159 h 166 0 0 0
11.5.5 Central, district, municipal and village structures fully or partially damaged
1711 h 244 0 0 0
due to earthquake (number)
11.5.6 Deaths due to earthquake disaster (number) 8790 h 1256 0 0 0
11.5. 7 Deaths due to other natural disaster (number)
11.5.8 Injuries due to earthquake disaster (number) 22300 h 3186 0 0 0
11.5.9 Injuries due to other disaster (number)
Target 11.6 By 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to
air quality and municipal and other waste management
11.6.1 Concentration of Total Suspension Particulates (µg/m3, 24 hours’ average) 230 h 199.3 176.3 153.3 115

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11.6.2 Concentration of Particulate Matters (µg/m3, 24 hours’ average) 120 h 101.3 87.3 73.3 50
11.6.3 Concentration of PM2.5 (µg/m3, 24 hours’ average) 40 h 34.7 30.7 26.7 20
11.6.4 Concentration of Sulphur Dioxide (µg/m3, 24 hours’ average) 70 h 70 70 70 70
11.6.5 Concentration of Nitrogen Dioxide (µg/m3, 24 hours’ average) 80 h 77.6 75.8 74.0 71
11.6.6 Concentration of Carbon Monoxide (µg/m3, 8 hours’ average) 10000 h 10000 10000 10000 10000
11.6.7 Concentration of Lead [µg/m3, 12 months’ average) 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5
11.6.8 Concentration of Ozone [µg/m3, 8 hours’ average) 157 h 147.1 139.7 132.3 120
11.6.9 Municipalities provided with sewerage services (%) 45 h 59.4 70.5 81.5 100
11.6.10 Private hospitals segregates wastes (%) 98 h 100 100 100 100
Target 11.7 By 2030, provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for
women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities.
11.7.1 Proportion of open spaces in urban households - - - - -
11.7.2 Proportion of open spaces in cities - - - - -
11.7.3 Proportion of women victim of physical or sexual harassment in previous 14i 10.27 7.47 4.67 0
12 months (%)
Target 11.a Support positive economic, social and environmental links between urban, peri-urban and rural areas by
strengthening national and regional development planning
11.a1 Proportion of population living in cities that implement urban and regional - - - - -
development plans integrating population projections and resource needs, by size
of city
11.a2 - - - - -
Target 11.b By 2020, increase the number of cities and human settlements adopting and implementing integrated policies
and plans towards inclusion, resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, resilience to disasters,
develop and implement, in line with the forth-coming Hyogo Framework, holistic disaster risk management at all levels

11.b.1 - - - - -
11.b.2 - - - - -
Target 11.c Support least developed countries, including through financial and technical assistance, in building sustainable
and resilient buildings utilizing local materials
11.c.1 - - - - -
11.c.2 - - - - -
Sources: a: NPC (2016), b: CBS (2012), c: CBS (2013), d: NPC (2015), e: CBS (2011), f: NPC (2015), g: CBS
(2013), h: NPC (2015), i: Nepal Police (www.nepalpolice.gov.np) (2016)

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 Annex Table 12

SDG 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 12.1 Implement the 10-year framework of programmes on sustainable consumption and production, all countries
taking action, with developed countries taking the lead, taking into account the development and capabilities of developing
countries
Target 12.2 By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources

12.2.1 Proportion of total water resource used (%) 10a 12.7 14.7 16.7 20
12.2.2 Use of fossil fuel energy consumption (% of total) 12.5a 13.2 13.7 14.2 15
12.2.3 Total carbon sink (tons) in forest area 2276 a 2522 2707 2892 3200
12.2.4 Land use for agricultural production (cereal as % of cultivated land) 80 a 78.7 77.7 76.7 75
12.2.5 Soil organic matter (%) 1a 1.80 2.40 3 4
12.2.6 Consumption of Wood per capita cubic meter) 0.11b 0.09 0.08 0.07 0.05
Target 12.3 By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along
production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses
12.3.1 Food waste rate at consumer level (waste per capita) - - - - -
12.3.2 Post harvest loss (%) 15c 11 8 5 1
12.3.3 Food loss index (% of supply, Cereal) 10 c 7.9 6.3 4.7 2
Target 12.4 By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life
cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in
order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment

12.4.1 Use of plastics (per capita in gram per day ) 2.7d 2 1.5 0.9 0
12.4.2 Disposal of liquid Industrial waste - - - - -
12.4.3 Disposal of solid Industrial waste - - - - -
Target 12.5 By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse

12.5.a Re-cycling of plastics in manufacturing industries (% of industries) 24.5e 42.0 55.1 68.2 90
12.5.b Re-use of glass and metal products in manufacturing industries (% of
7.2 e 29.3 45.8 62.4 90
industries)
Target 12.6 Encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to
integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle
12.6.1 Large and transnational companies adopting sustainable practices (number) - - - - -
Target 12.7 Promote public procurement practices that are sustainable, in accordance with national policies and priorities

12.7.a - - - - -
12.7.b - - - - -
Target 12.8 By 2030, ensure that people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness for sustainable
development and lifestyles in harmony with nature
12.8.1 Population covered by awareness campaign - - - - -

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12.8.2 Extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii) education for
sustainable development (including climate change education) are mainstreamed
in (a) national education policies; (b) curricula; (c) teacher education; and (d) - - - - -
student assessment
Target 12.a Support developing countries to strengthen their scientific and technological capacity to move towards more
sustainable patterns of consumption and production
12.a1 - - - - -

12.a2 - - - - -
Target 12.b Develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable development impacts for sustainable tourism that creates
jobs and promotes local culture and products
12.b1 - - - - -
12.b2 - - - - -
Target 12.c Rationalize inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption by removing market
distortions, in accordance with national circumstances, including by restructuring taxation and phasing out those harmful
subsidies, where they exist, to reflect their environmental impacts, taking fully into account the specific needs and
conditions of developing countries and minimizing the possible adverse impacts on their development in a manner that
protects the poor and the affected communities

12.c1 Eliminate LPG subsidy (as per cent of cost price) - - - - -

Sources: a: NPC (2016), b: CBS (2013), c: Estimation based on data from Nepal Agriculture Research council
d: Estimation based on consultation with thematic committee, e: CBS (2014) (Development of Manufacturing
Industries in Nepal)

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 Annex Table 13

SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat change and its impacts

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 13.1 Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries
13.1.1 Annual CO2 emission (metric ton per capita) 0.10a 0.09 0.08 0.07 0.05
13.1.2 Consumption of ozone-depleting substance (t) 1.20 1.08 0.99 0.91 0.44
13.1.3 Green House Gas emission from transport sector (%) 12b 10.4 9.2 8 6.00
13.1.4 Green House Gas emission from industrial sector (%) 12 b 10.4 9.2 8 6.00
13.1.5 Green House Gas emission from commercial & agricultural sector (%) 5b 4.3 3.83 3.33 2.50
13.1.6 GHG emission (CH4) from Agri sector (Gg) 614 b 662.5 698.89 735.23 796
13.1.7 GHG emission (N2O) from Agri sector (Gg) 32.6 b 34.5 35.96 37.40 39.8
13.1.8 GHG emission (CO2) from Agri sector (Gg) 23014 b 24627. 25837. 27046.9 29063
13.1.9 GHG emission (CO2) from Industrial sector (cement and lime) (Gg) 632 5
547.7 2
484.53 421.3 316
13.1.10 GHG emission (CO2) from energy sector (Industrial, transport &
7959 b 6897.8 6101.9 5306 3979
others) (Gg)
Target 13.2 By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along
production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses
13.2.1 Local adaptation plan preparation (number of village councils) 4b 0.09 0.08 0.07 120
13.2.2 Community level adaptation plan 31C 1.1 0.99 0.91 750
13.2.3 Implementation of adaptation plan 0 15 30 45 60
13.2.4 Climate smart villages 0 45 79 113 170
13.2.5 Climate smart farming 0 133 233 333 500
Target 13.3 Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation,
impact reduction and early warning
13.3.1 Proportion of schools covered by climate change education (%) 80 85 89 93 100
13.3.2 Number of trained persons in climate change mitigation - - - - -
13.3.3 Number of trained persons (local planners) in climate change 791c 3000
1380 1822 2264
adaptation
Target 13.a Implement the commitment undertaken by developed-country parties to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change to a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion annually by 2020 from all sources to address the
needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation and fully
operationalize the Green Climate Fund through its capitalization as soon as possible
13.a1 - - - - -
Target 13.b Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least
developed countries, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities
13.b1 - - - - -
Sources: a: NPC (2013), b: NPC (2015) (Estimation based on environment data), NAPA (2016), c: MoSTE
(2015)

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 Annex Table 15

SDG 15: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 15.1 By 2020, ensure the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater
ecosystems and their services, in particular forests, wetlands, mountains and dry lands, in line with obligations under
international agreements
15.1.1 Forest under community-based management (% of total dense forest areas) 39a 39.8 40.4 41.0 42
15.1.2 Conservation area (including forest, in % of total land area) 23 a 23.3 23.3 23.3 23.3
15.1.3 Conservation of lakes, wetlands, and ponds (number) 1727a 2599 3254 3909 5000
Target 15.2 By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation,
restore degraded forests and increase afforestation and reforestation
15.2.1.1 Handover of forests to leasehold forest groups (000 hectare) 44.6a 44.6 44.6 44.6 44.6
15.2.1.2 Additional plantation (hectare per annum) - 5000 5000 5000 5000
15.2.1.3 Additional plantation (seedlings in million per annum) - - - - -
Target 15.3 By 2020, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification,
drought and foods, and strive to achieve a land-degradation-neutral world
15.3.1 Rate of forest loss and degradation (%) 1.90b 1.39 1.01 0.63 0
15.3.2 Conservation of watershed (number) 3346 a 3787 4117 4448 5000
15.3.3 Forest Density (Average number of trees Per Hectare) 430 a

15.3.4 Conservation of rivulet & river banks through bio-engineering (km) 1675 a 3895 5560 7225 10000

Target 15.4 By 2030, ensure the conservation of mountain ecosystems, including their biodiversity, in order to enhance
their capacity to provide benefits that are essential for sustainable development
15.4.1 Potentially dangerous lakes (%) 0.37b 0.27 0.20 0.12 0
15.4.2 Mountain ecosystems covered by the protected areas (%) 67.8b 68.4 68.8 69.3 70
15.4.3 Mountain Green Cover Index - - - - -
Target 15.5 Take urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity
and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species

15.5.1 Threatened flora (medicinal & aromatic plants) (%) 0.48b 0.35 0.26 0.16 0
15.5.2 Threatened fauna (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, insects, 0.81 b 0.59 0.43 0.27 0
Platyhelminthes, mollusks, etc.) (%)
15.5.3 Wild tigers (number) 198 b 205 210 216 225
15.5.4 Rhino (number) 534 600 650 700 783
15.6.5 Community led anti-poaching units mobilized (number) 400 400 400 400 400
Target 15.6 Ensure fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and promote
appropriate access to such resources
15.6.1 - - - - -
Target 15.7 Take urgent action to end poaching and trafficking of protected species of flora and fauna and address both
demand and supply of illegal wildlife products
15.7.1 Trade of wildlife in RED LIST that was poached or illicitly trafficked - - - - -

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Target 15.8 By 2020, introduce measures to prevent the introduction and significantly reduce the impact of invasive alien
species on land and water ecosystems and control or eradicate the priority species
15.8.1 Number of nation–wide survey and research on invasive alien plant species 5
15.8.2 Prevented or prohibited imports of invasive alien species (number) - - - - -
Target 15.9 By 2020, integrate ecosystem and biodiversity values into national and local planning, development
processes, poverty reduction strategies and accounts
15.9.1 Plant (floral) species under conservation plan (number) 3b 30 3 3 5.00 15
15.9.2 Animal (faunal) species under conservation plan (number) 5 48 48 48 15
Target 15.a Mobilize and significantly increase financial resources from all sources
15.8.2 (Revised) Prevented or prohibited imports of invasive alien species (number) to conserve and sustainably use
biodiversity and ecosystems
15.a1 - - - - -
15.a2 - - - - -
Target 15.b Mobilize significant resources from all sources and at all levels to finance sustainable forest management and
provide adequate incentives to developing countries to advance such management, including for conservation and
reforestation
15.b1 - - - - -
15.b2 - - - - -
Target 15.c Enhance global support for efforts to combat poaching and trafficking of protected species, including by
increasing the capacity of local communities to pursue sustainable livelihood opportunities, the Doha Development Agenda
and the Hong Kong ministerial mandate.
15.c1 - - - - -
15.c2 - - - - -

Sources: a: MoF (2015), b: NPC (2015)

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 Annex Table 16

SDG 16: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 16.1 Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere
16.1.1 Direct deaths from armed and violent conflict (number) 1628a 1194 868 543 0
16.1.2 Displaced people from armed and violent conflict (number) 7043 a 5540 4414 3287 1409
16.1.3 Proportion of population that feel safe walking alone around the area they - - - - -
live
16.1.4 Proportion of seized small arms and light weapons that are recorded and
- - - - -
traced, in accordance with international standards and legal instruments
Target 16.2 End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children
16.2.1 Children age 1-14 years who experienced psychological aggression or
81.7b 60 44 27 0
physical punishment during the last one month) (%)
16.2.2 Women age 20-49 years who were first married before age 18 years (%) 48.8a 36 26 16 0
16.2.3 Children trafficking to abroad (including India) per annum (reported 64c 47 34 21 0
number)
Target 16.3 Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all

16.3.1 Transparency, accountability, and corruption in public (score out of 6) 3d 4 4 4 5

16.3.2 Proportion of victims of violence in the previous 12 months who reported

their victimization to competent authorities or other officially recognized conflict - - - - -
resolution mechanisms
16.3.3 Un-sentenced detainees as a proportion of overall prison population - - - - -

16.3.4 Proportion of seized small arms and light weapons that are recorded and
- - - - -
traced, in accordance with international standards and legal instruments
16.3.5 Good governance (Reported along a scale of -2.5 to 2.5. Higher values
correspond to good governance) for control of corruption -0.78e 0 1 1 2

Target 16.4 By 2030, significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows, strengthen the recovery and return of stolen assets
and combat all forms of organized crime
16.4.1 Volume of illicit financial flows - - - - -
16.4.2 Stolen assets recovery initiatives - - - - -
Target 16.5 Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms
16.5.1 People's perception on corruption (% of people with at least one instance in
29e 21 15 10 0
the past 12 months that require to give a bribe/present) (Corruption index score)
16.5.2 Proportion of businesses that had at least one contact with a public official
and that paid a bribe to a public official, or were asked for a bribe by those public
- - - - -
officials during the previous 12 months
Target 16.6 Develop effective, accountable and transparent institution at all levels.

16.6.1 Quality of public administration (score out of 6) 3.10a 2.72 2.09 1.71 5

103
16.6.1 Actual budget expenditure as percent of budget estimate 76f 81.1 84.9 88.7 95
16.6.2 Proportion of the population satisfied with their last experience of public
services
Target 16.7 Ensure responsive, participatory and representative decision making at all levels
16.7.1 Voter turnout (%) 78.4a 78.8 79.1 79.5 80
16.7.1 Proportions of decision making positions held by women in public 15 20.3 24.3 28.3 35
institutions
16.7.2 Proportion of population who believe decision-making is inclusive and
responsive, by sex, age, disability and population group - - - - -

16.8 Broaden and strengthen the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance

16.8.1
16.9 By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration
16.9.1 Birth registration (% of children under age 5 whose births are registered) 58.1 66.0 79.0 86.9 100

16.9.2 Birth registration by gender and social groups - - - - -

16.9.3 Citizenship by gender and social groups - - - - -
Target 16.10 Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national
legislation and international agreements
16.10.1 Number of verified cases of killing, kidnapping, enforced disappearance,
arbitrary detention and torture of journalists, associated media personnel, trade - - - - -
unionists and human rights advocates in the previous 12 months
16.10.2 Freedom score (Combined with freedom of speech, freedom of assemblies
- - - - -
and association, electoral self-determination)
16.10.3 Access to information (%) - - - - -
Target 16.a Strengthen relevant national institutions, including through international cooperation, for building capacity at
all levels, in particular in developing countries, to prevent violence and combat terrorism and crime
16.a1Number of trainings received by relevant institutions (Police and military
- - - - -
personnel, NGOs, Civil Societies, Bureaucrats)
16.a2 - - - - -
Target 16.b Promote and enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development

16.b.1 Number of laws and policies that are discriminatory - - - - -

16.b.2 Number of laws and policies that are amended - - - - -
16.b.3 Proportion of population reporting having personally felt discriminated
against or harassed in the previous 12 months on the basis of a ground of
- - - - -
discrimination prohibited under international human rights law
Sources: a: NPC (2015), b: CBS (2014), c: NHC (2014), d: CPIA (2015), e: NPC (2016), f: MoF (2015)

104
 Annex 17

SDG 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for
Sustainable Development

Targets and Indicators 2015 2019 2022 2025 2030

Target 17.1 Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere

17.1.1 Total government revenue as a proportion of GDP, (%) 19.1a 22.0 24.2 26.4 30
17.1.2 Domestic expenditure financed by domestic revenue, (%) 76 a 77.1 77.9 78.7 80
Target 17.2 Developed countries to implement fully their official development assistance commitments, including the
commitment by many developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income for official
development assistance (ODA/GNI) to developing countries and 0.15 to 0.20 per cent of ODA/GNI to least developed
countries.
17.2.1 Net official development assistance, as a proportion of OECD/DAC gross - - - - -
national income (GNI)

Target 17.3 Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all

17.3.1 Official development assistance as a proportion of total domestic budget, (%) 15.0a 15.8 16.4 17.0 18
17.3.2 FDI as a proportion of GDP (Inward stock) (%) 2.7 a 7.3 10.8 14.2 20
17.3.3 Volume of remittances (in US dollars) as a proportion of total GDP (%) 29.1 a 30.7 31.8 33.0 35
Target 17.4 Assist developing countries in attaining long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies aimed at
fostering debt financing, debt relief and debt restructuring, as appropriate, and address the external debt of highly indebted
poor countries to reduce debt distress
17.4.1 Outstanding Debt to GDP Ratio (%) 26.5 - - - 35.0
17.4.2 Debt service ratio to Export of Goods and Services, (%) 12.6 a 13.2 13.7 14.2 15
Target 17.5 Adopt and implement investment promotion regimes for least developed countries
17.5.1 Number of countries that adopt and implement investment promotion - - - - -
regimes for least developed countries
Target 17.6 Enhance North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation on and access to
science, technology and innovation and enhance knowledge sharing on mutually agreed terms, including through improved
coordination among existing mechanisms, in particular at the United Nations Level, and through a global technology
facilitation mechanism when agreed upon.
17.6.1 Number of science and/or technology cooperation agreements and - - - - -
programmes between countries, by type of cooperation
17.6.1 Number of science and/or technology cooperation agreements and - - - - -
programmes between countries, by type of cooperation.

Target 17.7 Promote the development, transfer, dissemination and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies to
developing countries on favourable terms, including on concessional and preferential terms, as mutually agreed
17.7.1 Total amount of approved funding for developing countries to promote the
development, transfer, dissemination and diffusion of environmentally sound - - - - -
technologies

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17.7.2 Internet Density (per 100 person) 49.8 65.0 70.9 79.9 95

17.8 Fully operationalize the technology bank and science, technology and innovation capacity-building mechanism for
least developed countries by 2017 and enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and
communications technology

17.8.1
17.9 Enhance international support for implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to
support national plans to implement all the Sustainable Development Goals, including through North-South, South-South
and triangular cooperation
17.9.1 Dollar value of financial and technical assistance (including through North-
- - - - -
South, South-South and triangular cooperation) committed to developing countries
17.10 Promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system under the
World Trade Organization, including through the conclusion of negotiations under its Doha Development Agenda
17.10.1 Worldwide weighted tariff-average - - - - -
17.11 Significantly increase the exports of developing countries, in particular with a view to doubling the least developed
countries’ share of global exports by 2020
17.11.1 Developing countries’ and least developed countries’ share of global - - - - -
exports
17.12 Realize timely implementation of duty-free and quota-free market access on a lasting basis for all least developed
countries, consistent with World Trade Organization decisions, including by ensuring that preferential rules of origin
applicable to imports from least developed countries are transparent and simple, and contribute to facilitating market
access
17.12.1 Average tariffs faced by developing countries, least developed countries
- - - - -
and small island developing States
Sources: a: MoF (2015)

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